Translated material
Need a dialogue
To the question of the TRV- science, why theology of the modern university answered Kand. physical .- Mat. sciences, cand. Theology, director of the scientific and theological center of interdisciplinary research of St. Petersburg State University, associate professor of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, rector of the university church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, Archpriest Kirill Kopeikin .
Our outstanding compatriot Laureate of the Nobel Prize Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg (1916–2009) in his Nobel lecture listed “three“ great “problems of modern physics”, the existence of which, according to him, means that “until the issues have been clarified, cannot be confident in anything.” The first is the “question about the increase in entropy, irreversibility and the“ arrow of time ””, the second is “the problem of interpretation of the non-nobility of quantum mechanics and the ability to find out anything new even in the field of its applicability” and, finally, the third is “the question of the reduction of the living to the inanimate, that is, the question of the possibility of explaining the origin of life and thinking based on one physics” [1]. In my deep conviction, all these truly great problems are insoluble outside the framework of theological discourse.
I'll try to explain my thought. The fact is that modern physics arose not just as an effective way of knowing the world, but as a new - natural - theology, theology of nature, replenishing the former theology - theology of revelation. It was precisely in the context of the European intellectual tradition, rooted in the biblical worldview, that the idea of two divine books - the book of the world and the book of revelations, between which there is no contradiction, since they were created by one author, formed. But the most important thing: if the world is the text of the Creator, then the same research methods can be applied to it as to the Bible.
New European science from the study of the pragmatics and semantics of the universe - which, in fact, was engaged in the science of medieval, looking for the symbolic meaning of things and events, - has moved to the study of the syntagmatics of the book of nature: the essence of the “object (willow) of the” method of cognition is that the mathematical form of the relationship of various “elements” of the world is studied. Today, in order to resolve the problems formulated by the Academician Ginzburg, we need to fill the syntagmatic structural patterns of the “text” of the book of the world found by objective science, which means that we return to its semantics and pragmatics again. This is the only way to approach the resolution of the problem of consciousness that is sharply standing on the agenda today.
One of the main difficulties of comprehending consciousness is that it has a specific quality of subjectivity described in the categories of meaning, values, intentions, while objective brain processes are described in the categories of physical: current strength, fluctuations, potential differences. It is the subjectivity of consciousness, which cannot be described in the language of physics, determines the main theoretical and practical difficulties of its description and modeling. “Consciousness is the greatest secret ... The situation is not so that we do not have a detailed theory; We absolutely do not understand how consciousness is built into nature, ”says the prominent modern philosopher David Chalmers [2]. And just theology can come to the rescue here. The meaning, values, intentions - all these substantial categories can only be acquired in the semantic context in which science arose - in the context of the biblical, theological, since it is theology that is within the humanitarian sciences of the humanitarian element in the proper sense of the word - questioning about the human essence that is not reduced to the biological or social existence and the absolute significance that gives each personality - absolute significance. significance due to the opportunity to enter into a dialogue with your creator.
The problem of the interpretation of quantum mechanics (and the problem of “consciousness-body” closely related to it), that is, the task of filling in the meaning of those fundamental structures that we discover, exploring the book of nature, cannot be resolved outside the semantic context-and this is again theological biblical context. “Physics does not consist only of the experiment and measurement, on the one hand, and the mathematical formal apparatus, on the other,” Pauli noted in one of the conversations with Heisenberg, “at the junction between them should be a genuine philosophy” [3].
But if you think about it, then this is a real scandal: to describe the fundamental level of nature, we use a mathematical construct (a state vector, which is a fundamental quantum mechanical concept and is a mathematical representative of a micro -object), the meaning of which is not clear to us! The famous English physicist Anthony Sadbury is convinced: “It is impossible to consider it correct that the only goal of the scientific theory is to predict the results of experiments ... The prediction of the results of experiments is not the purpose of the theory; Experiments only allow you to check whether the theory is true. The purpose of the theory is to know the physical world around us ”[4]. The problem of cognition of the nature of the universe is fundamentally important for theology, since one of the most important questions that it tries to answer is, this is the question of how it is possible that in the language of the Christian tradition is called salvation (and salvation was always understood as a combination with God); So, this is the question of the ontology of the world, and therefore so many theological texts are devoted to discussion at first glance, seemingly natural-scientific problems-the origin of the world and the arrangement of man.
Finally, the problem of irreversibility and “arrows of time” raises the question not only about the causes and evolution of the Universe, but comes close to the question of the purpose and meaning of the existence of the world, to teleological and theological problems.
Thus, all of the listed scientific problems are semantic problems, and they must be solved in the semantic context in which modern science arose, in the space of academic dialogue between science and theology. In addition to the listed “great” there are also many other important problems, which is not possible to discuss here due to the limited place, I mentioned only the most acute ones. But still, the most important thing is not even that theology can help solve the “great” problems of natural science; The main purpose of theology is to help a person find his place in the universe - namely, this is the highest purpose of the university, for the main idea that lies on his basis is the idea of universality of knowledge - not knowledge, fragmented into many private numbers, not a mechanical unification of sciences on a certain basis, but knowledge capable of covering the whole, all Universum - apparent and invisible, bodily, bodily, bodily, bodily, bodily, bodily, bodily, bodily, bodily, bodily, bodily, bodily, bodily, bodily, bodily, bodily and spiritual Natural and natural . As E. Schrödinger wrote, “we inherited from our ancestors the desire for united, all -encompassing knowledge. The very name, given by the highest institutions of knowledge - universities, reminds us that since antiquity and in continuation of many centuries the universal nature of knowledge was the only one that could be complete confidence ”[5]. As S. S. Averintsev remarkably said, “man is a creature that, firstly, has the idea of a whole and even words for the expression of this idea-to pan, universum, das all, the “ universe ” and other things, and moreover, that its human essence is radically determined by the seriousness that these words and this idea have this idea for him; And secondly, by definition, this whole cannot-to know, that is, to make the subject of information exactly as a whole. A person is doomed to know at the same time only parts of the whole, “ to know partly ” , as the apostle Paul (1 Cor 13:12) is expressed - and to be unquenchable noted that there is a whole and that only inside the whole part they gain a genuine, worthy of a person, that is, the meaning beyond utility. The ocean for fish and the forest for the beast is the “ habitat ” environment, the other living creature for them is the same food, food, and in their innocent world all this is correct and incast; But although a person’s person “ trades ” with the ocean, and with the forest, and with living creatures, for him the absolutization of the utilitarian installation cannot be innocent: poetry, and then philosophy repeats to him that “ the non -humble sea ” , mentioned by the Homer, is not just a trade path, but the element, for which any wisdom came up with strange words: “ space. ” , By the Russian , the durability of the Homer or the ancient philosophers, the human mind does not smell like a mental imperative.
1. Ginzburg V. L. On superconductivity and ultra -celebration (which I managed to do and what failed), as well as about the “physical minimum” at the beginning of the 21st century // Success of physical sciences. 2004. T. 174. Issue. 11. S. 1254.
2. Chalmers D. A recognizing mind: in search of a fundamental theory. M., 2013. S. 9.
3. Geisenberg V. Part and the whole // Heisenberg V. Selected philosophical works. SPb., 2006. S. 479.
4. Sadbury A. Quantum mechanics and physics of elementary particles. M., 1989. S. 294.
5. Schrödinger E. What is life in terms of physics. M., 1947. S. 11
6. Averintsev S. S. to the definition of man // Averintsev S. S. Man. Story. News: Anthology. Kyiv: Spirit and Lite, 2006. S. 400