Reading: Notes Chapter 8

1. The circumscription is partially derived from James Cornman, Materialism and Sensations (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1971), 11-12. The distinction between a property’s being active as opposed to passive will be explained in chapter 11.

2. A. Aliotta has made this point well:

This is, of course, the same point on which Dooyeweerd’s critique turns, and which I have called the criterion of self-performative coherency. In note 18 to chapter 4, his critique was applied to the theory of Kant, while here Aliotta applies it to both materialism and phenomenalism. The point is crucial, for each of the views contrasted in this chapter has differences from the others which stem from alternative ideas of the character of the datum of experience, and each of these ideas is dogmatic and in violation of the criterion of self-performative coherency. Moreover, it is clear that in each case the dogmatism is born out of a religious conviction about what is self-existent and thus divine. In chapter 10 the criterion of self-performative coherency will be developed in more detail to show why it renders every reductive characterization of the data of experience unjustifiable in principle.

3. From Mach’s The Analysis of Sensations, in J. Blackmore’s Ernst Mach (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 322.

4. From Mach’s Conservation of Energy, in ibid., 86.

5. Ibid.

6. Blackmore, Ernst Mach, 174-75.

7. E. Mach, Knowledge and Error (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1976), 354, 358.

8. A. Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (New York: Bonanza Books, 1954), 290-91.

9. Ibid., 22.

10. Ibid., 23.

11. Descartes’ Selections, ed. R. Eaton (New York: Scribners, 1953), 178.

12. Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 295.

13. W. Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 70. 

14. Ibid., 71-72.

15. Ibid., 74-75.

16. Ibid., 52.

17. Ibid., 145. It should be borne in mind that the point here is not to endorse Einstein’s view over Heisenberg’s or to reject other versions of the Copenhagen quantum physics; still less is it to defend some sort of Newtonian mechanics. Rather it’s to point out the ways both Einstein and Heisenberg take a reductionist view of reality and thus of atomic theory. So although both arrive at many conclusions in physics that are justified relative to the evidence, their arguments also include distortions due to the reductionist reasons given for those conclusions.

18. Philip Morrison, “The Neutrino,” Scientific American (Jan. 1956): 61.

19. See R. Gale’s Theory of Science (New York: McGraw Hill, 1979), 278 ff., and

A. McDonald, J. Klein, and D. Wark, “Solving the Solar Neutrino Problem,” Scientific American (April 2003): 40-49.

20. Mach, The Analysis of Sensations, in Blackmore’s Ernst Mach, 327 n. 14.

21. Einstein, ibid., p. 11.

22. For a more detailed treatment of the rationalistic basis for Heisenberg’s interpretation of the uncertainty relations, see my article, “A Critique of Descartes and Heisenberg,” Philosophia Reformata (45e Jaargang 1980- N. R. 2): 157-77.

23. Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 92. See also 144-46. 

24. Ibid., 72-73.

25. For more on how belief in God leads to a non-reductive view of number, space, and matter, see Dooyeweerd, New Critique, esp. vol. 2, 93-106. This view has been developed further by other thinkers. For example:

M. D. Stafleu. “Analysis of Time in Modern Physics,” Philosophia Reformata 35 (1970).

  . “Metric and Measurement in Physics,” Philosophia Reformata 37 (1972).

  . “The Mathematical and Technical Opening Up of a Field of Science,” Philosophia Reformata 43 (1978).

  . Time and Again: A Systematic Analysis of the Foundations of Physics (Toronto: Wedge, 1980).

  . “Theories as Logically Qualified Artifacts,” Philosophia Reformata 46, 47 (1981, 1982).

  . “The Kind of Motion We Call Heat,” Tydscrif vir Christelike Wetenscap, 1984.

  . Theories at Work (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987).

  . “Criteria for a Law Sphere,” Philosophia Reformata 53 (1988).

  . “The Cosmochronological Idea in Natural Science,” in Christian Philosophy at the Close of the Twentieth Century, ed. S. Griffoen and B. Balk (Kampen: Kok, 1995).

D. Strauss. “The Significance of Dooyeweerd’s Philosophy for the Modern Natural Sciences,” in ibid., 127-38.

R. Clouser. “A Brief Sketch of Dooyeweerd’s Philosophy of Science,” in Facets of Faith and Science, ed. J. van der Meer (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1996), vol. 2, 81-99.

M. D. Stafleu. “The Idea of Natural Law,” Philosophia Reformata 64 (1999).

D. Strauss. “Kant and Modern Physics,” South African Journal of Philosophy 19, no. 1 (2000), 26-40.

  . Paradigms in Mathematics, Physics, and Biology (Bloemfontein: Teksor, 2001).

M. D. Stafleu. “Evolution, History, and the Individual Character of a Person,” Philosophia Reformata 67 (2002).