Video Transcript: Aspects of Reality part 1 with Roy Clouser and Henry Reyenga

Henry - Hi, I'm Henry Reyenga and with me is Dr. Roy Clouser. And we're talking about the aspects of Herman Dooyeweerd and that law framework in that  Christian philosophy. And I tell you Roy I am happy to do this, because I was a  Dordt student back in the early 1980s, Philosophy major, and that Christian  college, Dordt college taught, generously the theories of Dr. Herman  Dooyeweerd. And I've always wanted to be with a professor who loved Christian philosophy, and to revisit these aspects of creation. So before we start, just give  a quick couple of minutes review, what is an aspect and why it's important?  Okay, and then we'll launch into talking about the aspects. 

Dr. Clouser - sounds good. That's an ordinary English term that Dooyeweerd  takes and presses into having a technical meaning. aspect is a kind of  properties and laws exhibited by the things that we experience in the world  around us. So, for example, there are quantative properties to things to that  actually the first one, right, that's what we represent by numbers.  

Henry - Okay, the quantity is, so everything has a quantitative aspect to it.  

Dr. Clouser - That's right, it has some quantity or other, including negatives. You  assigned, we have a natural number series. And we can measure things and we can number them, and so on, because everything does have quantitative  properties. Things also have spatial properties.  

Henry - So when I'm asking questions, I gotta figure this out. I gotta remember  this all. So you write in the myth of religious neutrality, and I've put in some, you  said, the term quantitative is used to designate the how much of things and  should not be misunderstood to refer to the theory of a realm of numbers or  abstract systems, a mathematics device for calculating quantity, I want to  unpack that before you move on. 

Dr. Clouser - He means that things have this kind of property. Okay, they really  possess that that's how math gets rolling, we see things of how much we want  to be able to designate that calculate it, and so on, we assigned numbers, the  

natural number series, is a series in which every number represents every  succeeding number represents an increase over the one just before it by the  amount of the first but it's abstract because then these can be applied to  anything, it doesn't matter whether you've got two or four atoms, two or four  bottles, two or four clouds, animals, whatever you're doing, they all have  quantity. And this is our way of getting at it. Measure.  

Henry - Okay? So think this through everybody follow with me. So sciences,  philosophy is in a lot of ways the science of stepping above reality and analyzing

it and trying to make sense out of its components, and it's essential aspects and  being so the first one quantity, quantitative aspect, everything is a number  there's one Henry one Roy can be calculated. Okay, now, is it possible to take  this aspect of reality and reduce it religiously? Like actually, somebody can take  this one piece of reality, and actually have religious presuppositions?  

Dr. Clouser - They can turn it into that Yeah. We define the religious belief as a  belief in something as divine. Where divine means the self existent reality,  everything else depends on Christians know that's only God. But lacking belief  in God, other philosophers come along and put some substitute there. A popular one nowadays, is the purely physical, purely physical, it is the foundation of  everything else. Whatever exists is either purely physical or produced by the  purely physical, and it is self existence. It's what generates everything. It's a God substitute. 

Henry - Okay, so we're gonna come to the purely physical and right, so we're  gonna talk a little more about that. What about quantitative Was there ever a  time in philosophy when somebody reduced the the quantptativer?  

Dr. Clouser - It's it's notorious. The ancient Pythagoreans not only did math they  thought everything was made of numbers. And numbers are the self existent  realities. They combine it to make those things that we see fall apart, but the  numbers themselves they'll come into being and worship the numbers they  worship. They actually they were to the number 10 that I put in that book. A lot of people find it very amusing that anybody prayed to the number 10, but they can  hardly say that Pythagoras is a dummy or something? He's looking at the world. And he's wondering, why is it that we do math correctly? We only always turns  out to be that way. And his answer is the correspondences, because things are  made of those numbers. Do the right calculation it comes out. A more modern  example would might be somebody like Heisenberg. Heisenberg says, in his  book Physics and philosophy, that he's sure that when we get to the ultimate  laws of reality, they're going to turn out to be mathematical laws of motion for  motion. And he says he regards those as the ultimate explainer. Okay, so it's the ultimate reality. And then he adds, voluntarily, this fits with the Pythagorean  religion. And I know of no one who has ever proven that this is right, he says,  But I, and many of my colleagues share this belief, but he recognizes this  religious character.  

Henry - One of the reasons I love Christian philosophy is because it seeks to  see those places where we reduce something to an idol and serve a created  aspect or a thing rather than the creator. So, so even quantitative is possibly  reduced. Now, here's spatial, here's another aspect. Dr. Dooyeweerd talked 

about. So what is continuous extension? What I mean, when I hear that  continuous extension,  

Dr. Clouser - well, that he's trying to give a circumscription there of our  experience of space as extended. And then we perceive objects in space and  examples. So one example of the spatial aspect? Well, it's the spatial properties  that we've seen experienced things to have their relational we see one thing  over here, ones to the right ones to the left, I'm right here. I have an aspect that  just seems like that. Why, why is that because it's a distinct kind of properties  related by distinct kinds of laws. Numbers are related by mathematical laws,  when you start calculating spaces, you involve geometric laws as well.  

Henry - Like, like taking off on geometry, this planet is here, that planet is here.  It's almost I mean, in a human ways, if I often get really close to you, I'm  violating a personal space. I mean, the social somewhat, which we'll talk about  later, but there's also the space in there. There's science of space, is that the  spatial science?  

Dr. Clouser - Sure, the sciences have arisen to show this historically, when  people notice, and then focused on abstract, one kind of properties and laws,  and then they go in there and they raise problems. They make theories, they  tried to develop what they found. And so you get advances in math advances in  geometry, advances in physics, but you can do that without regarding any of  them as God substitutes, you don't have to regard anything as the self existent  reality, that produces everything else in order to study it.  

Henry - Okay. Anyone ever reduced the spatial to the place of God or this one?  

Dr. Clouser - Yeah, sure, they've reduced everything else to space that John  Wheeler held to be like that, and the steady state theorists earlier in the 20th  century did that Bondi, Gold and Hoyle. Fred Hoyle, what we call matters like  

concentrating space, space is infinite, eternal, uncreated, and it spontaneously  generates protons according to Hoyle. And that's where matter comes from. So  then everything else you explain, as dependent on matter, but matter in turn is  dependent on space.  

Henry - I mean, think of Romans 1 here where they changed the truth of God for a lie.  

Dr. Clouser - And worship and serve something created, instead of the Creator  that can actually worship space. 

Henry - So your Christian philosophy is trying to say, you know, Christ is Lord of  all God created the heavens in the earth. We've fallen into sin of creation.  groans, Christ has redeemed in His death, His resurrection is ascension. And so that orders our reality. But without our reality ordered by God, we can simply find something else to do.  

Dr. Clouser – Let me say something. I don't worship and serve for you jumped  on that said that these people worship this, and a lot of them don't do that. The  Pythagoreans worship the numbers. A present day Pythagorean wouldn't  worship right. But that's not essential tp beliefs being a religious belief for a  number of major religions in the world, in which there is no worship, Brahman  Hinduism Tera, Vaada Buddhism Shinto, so we're not saying you have to  worship something in order to make it a god substitute. Paul said worshiped or  served. So you can you can worship and still be in thrall to serve your highest  reality? Yes, this is the most real thing, the ultimate metaphysically ultimate, all  the terms are used for that. Just put it in Daoism, the unproduced producer of all else same thing is what we're talking about. We know that that's only God, right? 

Henry - So when I say worship, or something like that, that's the definition. It's  elevating or serving something as your ultimate reality. What about that kinetic.  Now, that's another aspect we've got. Numerical we have spatial, and the third  one that Dr. Dooyeweerd pioneered was the kinetic.  

Dr. Clouser - A lot of people include that under physical, but at least two  influential thinkers regarded it as distinct Galileo and Einstein. So, the whole  idea with Galileo. So, he regarded them as distinct for a physical thing to exist  and exerted, its effects and so on. There has to be space in which it exists. So it  precedes the precondition for things being physical.  

Henry - Now employing movement, connect, connect, you say Kinetic is used to  designate the movement of things, their motion and space, many scientists  include these properties and laws for the physical aspects. As you know, Galileo seems not to have done that at least two contemporary thinkers have argued,  persuasively that is actually distinct aspects and one of them is Einstein and  Dooyeweerd.  

Dr. Clouser - Arguments for that practical on this,  

Henry - what is what, what would be a practical example of this aspect?

Dr. Clouser - I was just thinking about the quote I gave you from Heisenberg, the ultimate laws of reality are the mathematical laws for motion motion. So  everything in motion is fundamental to everything. So you have this, this  controversy? There's motion in this chair, right. Sure. There's atomic motion,  even if, even if this as a whole moving across the room? I mean, if our  discussion gets violent. You chased me around a little bit. But it's capable of  moving and internally it is, right. That's right. So change. And the you can claim  you can claim that that's the most fundamental feature of reality. And that  everything else, depends on there being matter that changes the purely physical but in motion  

Henry - now, surely, no one has reduced this to a religious belief.  

Dr. Clouser – Heisenberg thought his view of math plus motion? was just like the Pythagoreans.  

Henry - Okay, but he then he added motion in there.  

Dr. Clouser - Yeah, I guess another person you could include. There would be  Epicurus if you find the thing in the history of (unintelligible). For Epicurus, the  fundamental realities were space, and atoms, okay, but the atoms are  intrinsically in motion. This is the opposite of Aristotle. So, so far, for Epicurus,  the atoms changed, they go into different combinations, given enough time,  they'll go through every possible change. This world is one possible change, one possible state for all the atoms to be in space. So it was inevitable that this world show up sooner or later, and being one of the more stable ones it lasts long  enough for humans do arise and so on. And so we know about that, but we don't need a creator to explain this, it can explain itself, you just make space and  atoms and motion in self existentrealities. 

Henry - So change and that actually is an aspect of our reality. It should not be  reduced, but it truly is an aspect.  

Dr, Clouser - And so, we in this philosophy, avoid that controversy that existed  for a long time is the natural state of things to be at rest, or to be in motion. And  neither one is, is fundamental to the other. The most fundamental thing is for  things to depend on God, right. And then they then have motion as one of their  characteristics.  

Henry - Now, I don't know if you heard that Dr. Clouser slipped in a theory out  there in philosophy at rest or at motion? 

Dr. Clouser - Well, Aristotle argued the state of everything is to be at rest. All we  have to explain is why change ever takes place. That's precisely what Galileo  tossed out and began the rise of what we call modern science. Galileo does a  thought experiment, think of something traveling through space. If nothing ever,  nothing else ever impinges on it. Why would it ever stop? Okay, so he says,  Look, it's not that rest is natural and motion is unnatural, and you've got to  explain it is that a thing in motion will remain in motion, the thing at rest will  remain at rest, unless acted on by an external force.  

Herman - Okay. Okay, so I just want you to know that there's little like  philosophic insider information actually slipped to you all. So that you can as you study philosophy, you can actually Oh, I saw that quote. Now, next is the  physical aspect.  

Dr. Clouser - That's a very popular one today. In philosophy, someone who  claims that everything is fundamentally physical was called a materialist. That  doesn't mean that that person is out for all the money they can get and wants to  amass possession.  

Herman - Whereas most people think that way. Do you have a material world?  Are you living like a Material Girl, you're not talking that we're not talking about  that.  

Dr. Clouser - So this would probably be better called physicalists. Sounds weird  and strange. So there they go. The title under the title materialist. So these are  people who think that the ultimate reality is matter and energy. And that  everything can be explained by that. That is to say everything is either purely  physical, or produced by the purely physical. And the big controversy in this is  the relation between brains and minds. Really well, minds seem to have non  physical property. It doesn't look to us. In our immediate pre theoretical  experience, it doesn't appear to us that something that a wish, a desire, and  attitude, such as I hate that, or that those are physical things. The materialist  has to show that somehow they are, that they are merely brain processes, or  some activity of a neural network someplace. And they, they're divided over?  Just how real real, how real and how really non physical, the other things are,  such as concepts and so on. What well, do you admit there are such things?  Well, some of them say no, some of them say yes. And some of them go so far  as to say that the the mind is a distinct thing from the brain, but it's caused by  the brain, it's always dependent on the brain.  

Henry - Okay, so we have to even have time out here. We you just said some of  the things there that. First of all, you said, non non pre theoretical thinking, Now, 

okay, so pre theoretical. You're with me, and that's okay. So we're gonna try to  get the pre theoretical thinking is what just like living, naive experience  observation. Paying attention to  

Dr. Clouser - the world, as it appears to everybody, the materialist term for this is that it's the manifest reality is what we see. What we observe.  

Henry - About thinking is what we're doing in the class. And philosophers, like  those in the physical realm, or the materialist, as you talked about, what they're  trying to do is to make a science out of making sense out of our existence. So  when the brain and the mind are all working out, they're trying to connect that  we're all energy,  

Dr. Clouser – Sure. And they there are various degrees of reducing other things  to the physical. There's on the one extreme. As someone who says no, all things are only physical, they only have physical characteristics. And they're only  governed by physical laws, which has the severe, unanswerable difficulty. But  the guy who's making that theory is using logic to argue for it and saying, there  are no logical laws. There are only physical laws. That's a myth. Then there are  people that say, no, there are logical laws, and there are minds, but they're  produced by the physical catch up. And so that's the logical rules are the ones  by which we can help thinking. We can't get away from them. If you toss them  out. You're not conceiving of anything. So there's some kind of distinctness  about logical properties and laws, but it depends on they depend on the physical on there being physical brains and so on.  

Henry - And they would say they're not reducing reality to this, are they? Are  they just pointing out that everything is energy in their in their own  interpretations, energy? Are they reducing everything? 

Dr. Clouser - Yeah, that's their term When you when you take to what appear to  be two distinct types of properties, that's the manifest image, they call it, what  we all begin by experiencing. Now we want to inquire though, what's really going on?I f we're a materialist, we say what's really going on is that the physical is the ultimate reality. And it's in charge, and its laws and properties generate  everything else if there is anything else, if there is, if there's anything done  physical is generated by the physical,  

Henry - is that like the Star Wars, the force be with you? I mean, what I mean,  what, like, who's expouses this view, right now? 

Dr. Clouser - A lot of very prominent thinkers, I wouldn't say that materialism is a  majority of philosophers. But it's a very active plurality, it may be the largest  single group, I'm not sure. But they're very well known thinkers and they are  very vocal.  

Henry - How did they really go against God's order the Bible's revelation> 

Dr. Clouser - They would say, that's all some kind of nonsense. We know that  things are only physical. And the physical world went through stages from the  big bang on. And the conditions on earth are right for life to arise. Animals and  

plants evolved in humans did that have brains that can think logically and  mathematically, and aren't just in the control of the physical needs and glands  and stuff like that. So they have to explain how that's possible. And taking one  kind of property that appears to be distinct from another and trying to show that  it really is only the other is called a reduction argument. Reduce this to this. And  some of those are eliminated, so they get rid of the others altogether. And some  say no, there are such properties, but they're completely caused by 

Henry - Who's the father, who's the father, philosopher of that one, who actually  kind of introduced this.  

Dr. Clouser – Oh, materialism is old. 500 BCE, you've got people saying, it's  atoms, and the atoms combined to form everything.  

Henry - Okay. Okay. So now, you may say, Oh, I feel like a little lost here.  Because some of this is pretty deep, philosophic reflection into energy and  matter and its philosophic implications. Would you say that? There's something  practical in my naive experience, my everyday life I can get from understanding  this. The materials Yeah, to understand materialism. I mean, I put my  discernment cap on, and I listened to arguments, I read the news, all these  things. And if this is a prominent worldview, that means the presupposition that  claims that are religious are going to be made in this one, because it's a very  prominent one. So what are some of the markers cue us that somebody has,  this world view? 

Dr. Clouser - I think Christians have always held whatever their inclinations in  philosophy, have always held that what the materialist dismisses as what he  calls the manifest image, which then concludes it's illusory illusion, that's the  world God made and put us in and that's real, right? It would be hard, I'd be hard pressed to think of a Christian that didn't hold that. Okay. And not only that, even if they follow in the pathway of philosophy of trying to find the ultimate nature of  the world that God created, and even if they come up with this, or this or this 

combination, so on, they're still saying ultimately, that depends on God. Nothing  we can find in creation, is what the rest of it is what makes the rest of creation  so, so the they've always rejected that kind of dismissal of our everyday  experience as illusory.  

Henry - Okay, one more part one of the aspects and that's going to be well, I  mean, you know, I think after we do to some of these, we can take a little rest,  yes. And they gotta get to recharge a little bit and get back. So, the biotic you  know, what is life function, self maintenance. So, the biotic now, there seems,  feels different than the physical because now it feels like living beings asked as  a difference is there like something shifted here changed? 

Dr. Clouser - Sure. They are alive, they carry on metabolic processes. They  have to ingest digest, eliminate, they have to reproduce. None of those things  are done by things that are qualified physically like rocks so there's something  new here, but there is every time you go from one aspect or another there's  There's a distinct kind of, and I would if I were writing this I'd hyphenate it  properties and laws, properties that exhibit an orderliness because there are  laws that hold among them among the properties of the same kind.  

Henry - So a scientist can look at this aspect of reality. And there's actually a set  of laws that guide this aspect in differentiation. 

Dr. Clouser - Yeah, that's usually what they're looking for the laws of matter of  life of quantity in mathematics or whatever. And again, it goes on for  

Henry - so there is mathematics in the bio. The biotic is, is there earlier aspects? 

Dr. Clouser - When you when you have a cell, reproduce, the DNA splits, and  each side generates a new side you go from one to two. 

Henry - numbers there? Are there's other ones there, too? there's, is there  spatial there in this world,  

Dr. Clouser - where you only had one, now, you have two and they occupy more space, and how they relate to other other things can be traced out in other ways  to  

Henry – What about the physical, is that, you know, so the biotic but there's also  energy and matter and, but is the biotic matter different than the physical  matter? 

Dr. Clouser – No, it;s still matter. Now, there have been people that resisted the  idea that biology can be reduced to physics. And they have gone to the extreme  of making it utterly independent. Saying there that matter itself changes when it  becomes part of a living thing. It's a biomass or whatever. I think that's going to  the other extreme, it's a distinct kind of properties and laws. Not everything has  

biotic properties actively. In each of these kinds of properties, all things in  creation, have some property or other of every one of the aspects, but either  actively or passively.  

Henry - So hold that thought, because this is way too late in this presentation.  Before we launch into that, I mean, because a lot of questions. But mean, so  we're in this presentation, we're asking this question to has somebody reduce  the biotic as their ultimate reality? 

Dr. Clouser - There are a couple of people, it hasn't been a very popular theory.  But there have been a few that have said that the universe as a whole is a living  organism. We are parts of it. Plato went through that,  

Henry - I think I saw a Star Trek episode. So Plato was one that did that.  

Dr. Clouser - Plato tried it for a while. And there have been a few others that  have proposed it, even in the 20th century, the early 20th century. But it's never  been a popular view of widespread view in philosophy, the way materialism has  or the way dualism has. They're the two biggies.  

Henry - Now, I can think of some if I'm a minister in ministry, I can think of some  practical ways the sinful nature reduces the biotic where you have urges, sexual urges, and you just basically act on them. That aspect of reproducing is out of  balance, sinful out of balance, and then you objectify people, as you know, so I  can see when you're in ministry, some of these aspects, start creating like a, an  ethical piece, because while we're gonna get one later called the ethical, don't  feel love your neighbor. But I know working in the restorative justice. Those  some people just do it because they have such raging hormones, they say  they've reduced their life to the raging hormones. Rather than trying to make this a priority over everything else, they almost becomes like their reality.  

Dr. Clouser - Well, it does. It shapes how they tell they live so.  

Henry - So it's what's interesting, as we study philosophy, we're gonna find out  as we get into these aspects that relate to the biotic onward, we're going to start  seeing like aspects of character in them and how we can, you know, we're going to start seeing how we can reduce as you called it, pre theoretic thought life. 

That is our naive experience, our experience weakened, you know, this starts  becoming not just practical for philosophy, but we can start thinking about our  living our life and maybe we are reducing ourselves or we see in ministry that  there's a reduction going on, in terms of like, not just the study of philosophy, but 

it helps us organize your various threats.  

Dr. Clouser - If I can rephrase, I think what you're saying is that There is an  analogy in everyday life, yes to the problem, the project of reducing one aspect  to another in philosophy has a mirror image in over emphasizing one side of life  and having it dominate all the others, instead of trying to evenhanded  distribution, yeah. 

Henry - I sometimes think of like, and I don't know, I heard the term way back in  my Dordt days. Or I made it up as a minister, but I have no idea. But I use the  term meaning moments. These are sort of like moments that, that, in philosophy  makes the science out of them. But they're, they have powerful meaning, as we  live our ordinary life before God. And I'm always I've been surprised in my  devotions over the years or my prayers, and in my discipleship through the Holy  Spirit, in His Word, that sometimes aspects of philosophy like the biotic or  whatever, it has such a weight, that I can just practically reduce myself to this or  another, in fact, we're going to talk about them now. They're like meaning  moments.  

Dr. Clouser - So that's not always wrong. I mean, if we're hiking, and then we  drop the bag with the food and it floats away down the river, then we better  make a priority out of finding some food, a biotic priority there. Where when  you're crossing the street, you better make the priority about calculating the right space. Do I have time to get across without getting flattened? Right, so so that  those things come and go. But what you were talking about is some obsession,  whereby somebody places some temporal value in such high esteem that  absorbs the rest of life  

Henry – It becomes your kind of like unspoken aspiration, or who you really bow down to, I think of like, diving. So my wife and I are trying to well, biotic, right. So we're like getting books and reading and all of these things. And my, my brother  in law works at an emergency room in Bellingham, Washington. He says, in the  

last 10 years, extreme obesity has run rampant. And now they have to, they  have like, lifts, and all of these things, to help people to move people, and  there's even a program on TV. And again, there's no judgments here. I'm not  trying to say that anyone's value is less for the eyes of God. But it is a practical  place where as stewards of our own body, the biotic. So the philosophy, at this  point, we start seeing lots of places where we, we study it scientifically. But we 

also can see, there's a lot of meaning moments in practical life where we're  trying to like not make one piece of our existence, apart from our worship.  

Dr. Clouser - That's one of the big differences between the way belief and God  can be our dominant goal of pleasing God living for God. It doesn't require us to  give up all the rest of life, or to regard it as illusory or just not important. There  are people who are given that call, right, who may give up a normal life and just  lead a life of prayer and solitude But that's a minority, right? The majority of  people, equally believers in God, right, and equally sincere in their devotion, and so on. But then, by making the focal point of what leads the whole of your life, to be God outside of creation, right? God, God is the center, but transcends  creation. We don't overemphasize any part of the credit creation, right? It gives  us an even handed view, we can participate in all the aspects of life. 

Henry – We can see his moderation glorifies God, and don't take one aspect  and take it out. It's really right. And that's what's so great about foster everybody  is that you're saying the theoretic the science, of understanding and meaning in  reality, but also we're getting insights, meaning moments into your practical life  as you read the Word of God and as you live your life before the Lord. So,  anyway, this is part one. We'll wrap this up here and after you get a little  recharge, come back and check us out on part two of the aspects of reality.