Using Swedenborg to Understand the Quantum World I: Events

For the last hundred years, physicists have been using the quantum theory about the universe, but they still do not properly understand of what the quantum world is made.

The previous physics (referred to as “classical” and started by Isaac Newton) used ideas of “waves” and “particles” to picture what makes up the physical world. But now we find that every object in the quantum world sometimes behaves as a particle and sometimes behaves as a wave! Which is it? In quantum physics, objects behave most of the time like waves spreading out as they travel along, but sometimes measurements show objects to be particles with a definite location: not spread out at all. Why is that? It is as though their size and location suddenly change in measurement events. This is quite unlike classical physics, where particles exist continuously with the same fixed shape. In quantum physics, by contrast, objects have fixed locations only intermittently, such as when they are observed.  So they only offer us a discrete series of events that can be measured, not a continuous trajectory. Quantum objects, then, are alternately continuous and discontinuous.

Why would we ever expect such a fickle world? Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) has some ideas that might help us. He describes how all physical processes are produced by something mental, or spiritual, and this can be confirmed by reason of the similarity in patterns between the physical processes and their mental causes. In Swedenborg’s words, there are correspondences between the physical and the mental—that they have similar structures and functions, even though mind and matter are quite distinct.

I need to state what correspondence is. The whole natural world is responsive to the spiritual world—the natural world not just in general, but in detail. So whatever arises in the natural world out of the spiritual one is called “something that corresponds.” It needs to be realized that the natural world arises from and is sustained in being by the spiritual world . . . (Heaven and Hell §89)

Although these ideas are not part of present-day science, I still hope to show below that they may have some implications for how science could usefully develop.

Swedenborg’s theory of mind is easy to begin to understand. He talks about how all mental processes have three common elements: desire, thought, and action. The desire is what persists and motivates what will happen. The thought is the exploration of possibilities for actions and the making of an intention. The action is the determined intention, the product of desire and thought that results in an actual physical event.

The [actions] themselves are in the mind’s enjoyments and their thoughts when the delights are of the will and the thoughts are of the understanding therefrom, thus when there is complete agreement in the mind. The [actions] then belong to the spirit, and even if they do not enter into bodily act still they are as if in the act when there is agreement. (Divine Providence §108)

All of the three spiritual elements are essential. Without desire (love), or ends, nothing would be motivated to occur. Without thought, that love would be blind and mostly fail to cause what it wants. Without determined intention, both the love and thought would be frustrated and fruitless, with no effect achieved at all. In everyday life, this intention is commonly called will, but it is always produced by some desire driving everything that happens. 

Here is the pattern:

      Spiritual                                                                   Natural
Desire + Thought => Mental Action (Intention)    >>    Physical Action, or Event, in the World

Swedenborg summarizes the relationship between these elements as follows:

All activities in the universe proceed from ends through causes into effects. These three elements are in themselves indivisible, although they appear as distinct in idea and thought. Still, even then, unless the effect that is intended is seen at the same time, the end is not anything; nor is either of these anything without a cause to sustain, foster and conjoin them. Such a sequence is engraved on every person, in general and in every particular, just as will, intellect, and action is. Every end there has to do with the will, every cause with the intellect, and every effect with action. (Conjugial Love §400:1–2)

Now consider Swedenborg’s theory of correspondences mentioned above. He says that there is a similar pattern between the details of the effects and the details of the causes. ”As above, so below,” others have said. So if mental action produces some effect in the physical world, then, by correspondence, we would expect a similar pattern between that physical effect and each of the three elements common to all mental processes. We would expect something physical like desire, then something physical like thought, and finally something physical like mental action. Do we recognize these patterns in physics? And if so, do we recognize them better in classical physics or in quantum physics?

I claim we do recognize them in physics:

• We recognize the “something physical like desire” as energy or propensity. These are what persist physically and produce the result, just like desire does in the mind. They are in both classical and quantum physics.
• We recognize the “something physical like thought” as the wave function in quantum physics. This describes all the possibilities, propensities, and probabilities for physical events, just like thought does in the mind.
• We recognize the “something physical like mental action” as the actual specific physical outcome, a selection of just one of the possibilities to be made actual. This is a measurement event in quantum physics, the product of energy or propensity and the wave function, just like the product of desire and thought is the mental action.

We will discuss energy and wave functions in later posts, focusing here on the final step of mental actions and physical events. According to Swedenborg’s ideas, the structure of mental processes and the structure of physical events should be similar. So, too, the function of mental processes and the function of physical events should be similar. Can we tell from this whether we should expect a classical world or a quantum world?

One feature of thought and mental action with which we should be familiar is time. That is, we always need time to think! Without any time gap between desiring and intending, we would be acting instinctively and impulsively. Sometimes that works but not always (at least in my experience!). Most often, there has to be some delay, even some procrastination, between having a desire and fulfilling it. That delay gives us time to deliberate and decide on the best action to select. And, most importantly, if it is we who decide when to act, we feel that we act in some freedom. It feels better.

If the physical world corresponds to those mental processes, according to Swedenborg, what hypothesis do we reach about physics? It is that there will be corresponding time gaps between the beginning of some persisting energy or propensity and the selection of physical outcome. Remember that quantum objects are selected and definite only intermittently—when measured, or observed—while classical objects are continuously definite with no gaps. All this leads us to expect that physical events should not be continuous; that is, we should expect a quantum world rather than a classical world.

First appeared here.

Can we know the nature of God?

There are several ways of describing how much we can know about God.
1. Apophatic or ‘negative theology’: We can know nothing of the true Divine nature.
2. Cataphatic or ‘positive theology’: We can know something of the nature of God.

Within the positive approach, there are two options:
2a. Our knowledge refers only by analogies
2b. Our knowledge (at least in part) does truly refer to God.



1. Apophatic Theology
One well-established religious tradition—apophatic or ‘negative theology’—that refuses to make statements about Divinity. This is the via negativa.
This is almost self-contradictory, like saying "Nothing can be known about God". Not even that statement itself!

2a. Knowledge by Analogies
There have historically been many analogies for how we might be related to the divine, and the bible is nearly full of metaphorical descriptions of divine and spiritual things.

Aquinas uses the negative approach in part when he says that common terms such as ‘life’, ‘wisdom’, even ‘existence’ can only be applied to God analogically. He combines the via negativa with an analogical account of the way we know God. According to him, God does not have wisdom but has something analogous to wisdom. We talk about love with humans and love with God, but these are not strictly the same thing. Rather, God has something that is like the love that we know. It is sufficiently like love that we do call it love, but it is strictly distinct. Terms in his theology are not univocal, but analogous. According to Aquinas, this is all that can be given.

This would make establishing a theistic science difficult. None of the terms we might want to use in our arguments actually refers properly to God under the negative or analogical traditions. I, therefore, do not follow it.

2b. Unequivocal Knowledge
Duns Scotus (1265-1308) was one opponent of Aquinas on this issue. Scotus holds, for example, that ‘being’ is a univocal notion applicable to everything that exists without restriction. This to return to the position of Parmenides, for whom being is the central concept. According to Scotus, we should be able to unequivocally describe God with terms such as being, love and wisdom. Scotus’ view has become the dominant view in later Western history, and we will need it within theistic science. That is, we should try to avoid using analogies at the most fundamental level of explanation.

So I will attempt to form a cataphatic or positive theology and one, moreover, in which we can actually describe God to some extent.

I want to start with whatever can be truly attributed to God and then use well-specified analogies and similarities to deduce what attributes can then be truthfully attributed to us. I believe we have sufficient concepts given to us via revelation that we can make statements about God that are mostly true. We do not, of course, claim to make statements about all of an infinite God. We only claim that our terms do properly refer to God and at least approximately describe the nature of God.

That should not blind us, however, to the crucial role of analogies in learning new ideas concerning nature and divinity. In fact, some analogies are so important that they link not just our ideas, but also nature and divinity themselves. We call these relations correspondences. Later I will discuss how such relations are more than analogies and how they are important descriptions of structures and dynamics within theism. And, using theistic science, we will unequivocally describe things related by such correspondences and then see why the various analogies do hold. In this way we will have the univocal language of Scotus, while simultaneously agreeing with Aquinas that particular analogies are essential to understanding the relations between divinity and created things.

Adapted from chapters 7 and 11 of Starting Science From God.

Is God physical?

The God of theism supports nature and can act within nature. Does that make God natural or even physical? How do we know God is 'beyond nature', in order to be come supernatural?  If we think that everything that has a physical effect is itself physical, then God would be physical.

We rightly think that everything has a nature, namely a description of its substance and of all its essential properties and powers. In agreement with this general sense of the word ‘nature’, Aristotle's original Greek meaning of ‘physical’ is that which has its source of change within itself. If theism is true, and God is the source of our life and therefore the only thing with life in itself, then, strictly speaking, only God is physical!    In this line of thought, Victor Reppert posts

I wouldn't even necessarily call God supernatural. There could conceivably be a science studying God's actions, based on which we could make predictions. If God would let us, we could even perform experiments on Him. What's wrong with this idea?
Actually, if you say that what we mean by supernatural is that it won't fit in to a mechanistic order, then of course God is supernatural. That's how Lewis defined it. But does everyone understand the term "supernatural" in that way? It seems like a lot of baggage is brought into the use of this term.

Aristotle's aim was to distinguish it from what is artificial, which are those things that have sources of change outside themselves.  Applying this principle as above would make all of the the rest of us beings as therefore ‘artificial’ (in some sense).

Some people do indeed view the world as an artificial tool or instrument of God, like a musical instrument which God plays to make music (us). Some think of God as like the author of a book in which are the 'artificial' characters, as I discussed previously.

However, this is not the everyday use of these terms. Since we commonly use the word ‘naturalistic’ or ‘physical’ to describe the basic sciences of today, we need to invent a new name such as ‘generalized-natural’ or ‘generalized-physical’ for the above sense of everything with a source of change within itself.

A ‘generalized physics’ would be the study of those things, and, when theism is assumed true, it will coincide with our theistic science. Both will be the study of everything that has a causal influence on the things in our world. In another variation on definitions, some philosophers define “physical things [as] those things that are postulated by a complete physics.” Theists claim that this must refer to the generalized sense of ‘physical’ which includes minds and even God.


So I am not going to use such a 'generalized' terminology, delightful though it may be.

I am therefore going to use ‘nature’ to refer to what is currently known as physical, including all material things and also whatever virtual or pre-geometric processes may be surmised in quantum gravity. Then, everything natural may be taken as itself dead and not living, however active or ‘subtle’ it may be. We will later see that natural things are energized and enlivened by something spiritual within them, but we will never need to identify spiritual as the ‘inmost of the physical’ and hence itself essential natural. The term physical, as I and most people use it, excludes what is mental or spiritual. And, of course, I will have to explain how they are related.

Adapted from chapter 7 of Starting Science From God.