Some time around the middle of the
20th
century the field of philosophy called ontology began to experience a
change. Ontology is the study of being in the largest sense. More
than a scientific analysis such as Aristotle got started, ontology is
a way of considering the entire phenomenon of existing and being
aware of existing.
For
millennia a philosophy of existence-an ontology-was necessarily
phenomenal. The 20th
century philosopher Jean Paul Sartre wrote an epic tome named 'Being
and Nothingness' during the Second World War that epitomizes a
conscious phenomenal epistemology inclusive of ontology. Descartes'
cogito ergo sum-I think therefore I am- is simultaneously an
ontological and epistemological phenomenality.
In
ancient Sumer atop the Ziggurats there were great dressed up dolls
portraying Babylonian gods (ref. Rosenberg's Abraham-The First Biography) that were moved around by a priesthood for
the benefit of the masses below who could look up and observe a great
play explaining the mechanics of ontology. That mechanics differed
from that of ontological phenomenalism. A mechanics for being is
today named physics rather than philosophy. Cosmology around the time
of Sartre's composition of 'Being and Nothingness' was moving towards
its modern phase though not quite there yet. From Lemaitre's
interpretation of Einstein's General theory of Relativity the concept
of the Big Bang or inflation of a Universe from a singularity arose.
Late in the 20th
century physical cosmology surpassed ontological phenomenalism as the
fundamental theory of being.
Not
that Sartre's subjectivist approach to ontology is wrong, it is
simply limited to a place within cosmological ontology. People and
science regard the mind and its place in nature as fitting within a
steady state field (not one like Fred Hoyle's) wherein exists
everything in the Universe. That field is often thought to be the
Higgs field named for Peter Higgs-a field that provides every
particle-wave with mass. Where the perturbations flowing through the
field arose from to start with is challenging to say. The field
itself is, I think, though to be expansionist itself from a
singularity. With all the great physical theory based on and often
confirmed by observation a phenomenalist epistemology is severely
challenged to get attention. Some physicists believe philosophy and
ontology hasn't kept up with cosmology and science. Of course some
neurologists and psychiatrist also believe their study of the brain
and human behavior have transcended a phenomenal epistemology like
that of Sartre. Reductionism explaining away the holistic experience
of mind and being within a Universal Higgs field.
For
some time in history spanning a few thousand years theological
approaches to ontology were preeminent over physical and cosmological
approaches. With evolution theory and later Big Bang cosmology and
even later the Hubble Space telescope and microwave telescopes able
to observe the pattern of the background radiation of the Universe
left over from the era less than 400,000 years after the Big bang
when the Universe cooled down enough to let electrons escape, there
were two great theories that seem to oppose, at least initially,
theological paradigms about the Universe. So at the end of the 20th
century theology and ontology were to some prima facie obsolete.
While work had gone into science, less so did modernization after
reflection arise in theology and philosophical ontology based on
phenomenal approaches.
Obviously
some ontologies like that of Bishop Berkeley's Ideaism were not able
to be refuted technically. Berkeley's arguments remained valid as did
Sartre's even as reductionists challenged each part simply because of
the recursive nature of arguments and responses. In fact entire
scientific cosmologies arose that took up a phenomenal approach to
mechanics with the innovation of cosmological holography theory and
higher dimensional spaces.
The
Bible book of Genesis itself may be taken in more than one way and is
amenable to modern interpretations permissive of relativistic time
paradigms even as theologians may interpret God's omnipotent and
omniscient potential as encompassing a level 4 Multiverse (re: M.
Tegmark) wherein everything is actually static and pre-existing
while human minds journey through and infinite number of them
branching and switching to different Universes with each individual
new thought though unaware. Assumptions about the Bible and the
nature of God tend to restrict the possible ways of interpreting the
book of Genesis though theologians readily stipulate the absolute,
omnipotent power of God. Jesus Christ's reference to God having many
mansions could refer as well to an infinite Multiverse as well as
apartments or buildings in one metaphysical realm.
As
philosophy and science were apparently briefly surpassed by modern
scientific cosmology in the field of ontology at least, remarkably
within a generation science itself provided the tools to renormalize
each as fields of study consistent with the Bible and or ontological
phenomenalism (with all due respect to Edmund Husserl though I am not
above referring preponderantly to his works such as 'Logical
Investigations').
