Christmas Eve
First, let me note that I'm having email problems again. I seem to be receiving email which is reply to email I have sent, but, for some of you, I'm not receiving email from your compose button. I reply to all emails. If you have not received a reply to your email from me within two days, you know I did not receive it. Thanks to Vicki Church for discovering this.
Second, some disclaimers about what I am writing today. Today's post is about medieval philosophy and quantum mechanics. I have no expertise in either. I do know a little about medieval philosophy and a very, very little about quantum mechanics. Among the daily readers of this blog I have two Ph.D. scientists, one of whom is a Ph.D. in physics. I also have two Ph.D.'s in philosophy, one of whom wrote his dissertation on the medieval philosopher, St. Anselm of Canterbury. These four people are well aware that I don't know what I'm talking about. This little essay will make a wild leap (quantum leap metaphorically) of imagination.
Here is my instance of my own confirmation bias. Refer to the previous post on Confirmation bias, Karen King, and "The Gospel of Jesus' Wife."
I believe in the phrase in the Nicene Creed that God is the maker of "all that is, seen and unseen." I understand the word unseen in the context of the Nicene Fathers, who were not talking about sub-atomic particles, but about a spiritual realm of the "heavenly host" of various angelic, spiritual beings not normally perceived by humans. I am not one of those more secular minded, Sadducaic Christians who believe in God, and that Jesus was a great human being, but that things like His resurrection, angels, demons, the second coming, etc. don't exist. Perhaps I should call them minimalist Christians. They are found in many mainline Christian churches. I am an Apostles' and Nicene Creed Christian, not a Canadian Creed Christian.
A number of medieval philosophers thought a lot about the nature of angels. You are likely to be familiar with the aphoristic question, "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" Some, I am told, thought of angels as being made up of something similar to air, only thinner. Others thought of angels as enormous beings living in another realm or dimension beyond human perception. When they move into the realm of human perception, humans see only a small part of them. This view actually goes at least as far back the first century BC or first century AD. In the Bible angels appear and disappear. In their appearance they look like humans, no wings, no halos. no white robes. They talk. They listen. They sing. They can appear singly or in groups. The duration of their appearance is usually fairly brief. In at least one case, however, the angel Raphael functions as a "guardian angel for Tobias,'' over a lengthy period of time. This is in the book of Tobit in the Apocrypha.
Last week I was watching a PBS program on Quantum Entanglement. I think I understood a good bit of it. Here are the points that are relevant for my post today: (1) In the first half of the twentieth century there was a good deal of conflict between Albert Einstein and Nils Bohr. Part of the conflict was that Einstein believed in cause and effect for everything. Bohr thought that some effects had no cause. (2) Werner Heisenberg established the principle of uncertainty, that the very observation or measurement of a particle changed it. (3) Subsequent physicists determined that a particle did not exist until it was observed. Yes, I'm pretty sure I got this part right. The program repeated this statement numerous times. (4) These scientists theorized that before particles were observed and thus came into existences, they were amorphous, non-distinctive, random, wavy--only adjectives work, there cannot be a noun for them. Observation makes them particles.
At some point late in the program my mind made a big connection leap. Could all this in some odd way apply to the medieval philosophical discussion of air and angels? Could it be that angels are perceptible beings until they are observed? Could they be amorphous, wavy, and un-nounable until a human observes one, like Mary observing Gabriel at the time of the annunciation in Luke 1:26-39, or when the shepherds were surrounded by choir of angels telling them of the birth of Jesus singing to them Gloria in excelsis, Deo (although I suspect the angels were singing in Aramaic, not Latin).
So I made this connection. It confirms my bias. I could immediately see flaws in it. But it's okay for there to be flaws in it, since I don't believe in absolute cause and effect anyway (at least I don't this week).
The poem that begins The Collected Poems of John Donne is entitled Air and Angels. The poem assumes the medieval discussion. In the first stanza Donne compares his ideal beloved to angels.
"Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name.
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame.
Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be.
Still when to where thou wert I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see."
Don't read the rest of the poem. It gets rather sexist at the end.
No blog tomorrow. It's Christmas. Joy to the World! The Lord has come! I love you all and look forward to seeing you in person in 2021.
Faithfully,
Christian
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