FoS is about a platonic speculation that builds on and cooperates with scholastic thinkers such as Aristotle and Aquinas. If you will, a new kind of Thomism of Dr Wolfgang Smith who is its inspiration.
It challenges the dominant ontology of today namely Democritianism. This being that reality comes from the lowest level up in contrast with Platonism, its old rival, which is from on high i.e. top down.
If Newton could be said to be the Father of Enlightenment Science then Darwin would be the Father of Democritian Science, also known as atomism.
Darwin’s success at promoting an idea that eventually became a theory that reality comes about randomly through undirected processes was predicated upon abductive reasoning. Darwin used this to infer the best explanation about events of the past that cannot be tested empirically.
Using the same system of reasoning Dr Smith’s Thomistic Plato challenges Democritus to great effect.
Visual perception is the battleground. If one presumes all reality is merely particles and energy of one form or another careering and jumping through space, then this ontology ought to account for visual perception but it does not; despite volumes of research.
Empiricists studying the brain have evidenced how an image visually perceived is taken apart but then the trial ends. Let me give an example of what is known as the ‘binding problem’:
When one looks at a red square, different neurons in the brain process the colour red and the shape of the square separately. The binding problem is about figuring out how these separate pieces of information are combined so that you perceive a single red square rather than just "red" and "square" independently.
Wolfgang Smith thinks a Thomistic ontology offers the best way of explaining the binding problem. It proposes Man as a microcosm of the cosmos. What he means by this is that in cosmological terms human beings are a mirror image of the three cosmological realms of corporeal, intermediary or psychic; and aeviternal. These correspond to time and space; just time; and no time or space, respectively. Dreams are an example of psychic experience - in these there is only time but no space.
The cosmological mirror reflects Man’s body, soul and spirit. Now this contrasts with the magisterial teaching of the Church which talks of ‘Body and Soul, Truly One’ hence the reason to refer to this idea as a new Thomism.
Now the body takes the image apart; the soul puts the image back together and the spirit perceives motion.
Now let’s examine how Dr Smith himself explains this extraordinary phenomenon:
“In our corporeal nature we are subject to the condition of space; and on that level being, subject to the condition of space, is where all that neural physiology takes place but the actual binding takes place on the next level up, which is the level of the intermediary or the psychic plane.
In other words it arises on the corporeal level and not the psychic so if we were purely corporeal creatures there could not be perception, we could not see anything so incidentally we have these three levels of the cosmos the intelligible, the psychic and the corporeal….. Man is a microcosm of the cosmos in miniature so even as the cosmos is tripartite the anthropos is also tripartite and if we were not tripartite visual perception would be impossible and this is what baffled the neurophysiologists, the binding problem which no one has solved and no one can solve on the corporeal level.
The binding problem would be impossible to solve were it not for the fact that Man is more than a body. Man is not only a body he also has a soul and there is a third component above soul; there is spiritus. We need all three and it turns out that the aeviternal in Man is also needed for ordinary perception because there could be no perception of motion; if you think about it deeply the perception of motion is only possible because within Man there is a level above time itself.”
Combining with Dr Smith’s ontology there is the crucially important work of James J Gibson an empiricist and in Dr Smith’s opinion:
“He was one of the greatest empiricists I think the world has ever seen but he was not a metaphysician. When you read his papers he expresses himself in purely empiricist terms.”
Aviation’s importance is a reference to the work concerning visual perception carried out by Dr Gibson for the US Air Force during World War II. His empiricism determined that visual perception is direct and does not rely on internal cognitive processes or interpretations, being instead based upon the information available in the environment.
Moreover, perception does not take place as a series of points in time but requires constant motion and is instantaneous.
At this juncture let’s bring in Alfred North Whitehead’s important term: bifurcation. Whitehead's philosophy, known as process philosophy, emphasises the interconnectedness and interdependence of all aspects of reality.
This approach aimed to overcome the limitations of Cartesian dualism by integrating the mental and physical aspects of existence into a unified framework.
Wolgang Smith read Whitehead’s ‘Science and the Modern World’ as a teenager. It seems he understood little but never forgot its underlying critique of late Enlightenment science.
Dr Smith also points out it was Galileo and DesCartes who ushered in the very bifurcation that Whitehead inveighed against; while agreeing that striping and relegating qualities in subordination to quantities, effectively ‘turbo charged’ scientific advancement but at a cost …
Which brings me to the physical sciences and of how Dr Smith resolves the measurement problem of quantum mechanics.
Why does the wave function collapse when observed from the corporeal world? Wolfgang Smith draws on his Perennialism explaining how hylomorphic concepts of potency and act together with the Thomistic ‘act of being’ are in point.
In 1995 Wolfgang Smith published The Quantum Enigma - Finding the Hidden Key. His monograph introduces a new concept of vertical causation. An etiological idea, contrasting the horizontal causation of time and space, with a new concept operating instantaneously and holistically (irreducible wholeness) transcending the usual constraints of space and time.
The monograph makes reference to Dembski’s Theorem ( William A Dembski). Dr Smith points out that the theorem proves how Complex Specified Information is transferred instantaneously - that word again!
It also examines the impact of Rene DesCartes positing dualistic realms of Res Extensa - Extended Entities and Res Cogitans - Thinking Entities concluding that a residual Cartesianism pervades today’s scientists of which many are unaware.
This residual Cartesianism locks in any career scientist choosing to depart from models of Einsteinian space-time or Darwinian evolution. Neither is there scope for arguing Scientific Method may be applied to any ontology or none at all.
In the search to understand the measurement problem, it is only by discarding DesCartes that scientists would stop behaving like ‘rabbits in headlights’. Bifurcation stands in the way of thinking ontologically.
This alludes to the title of Dr Smith’s final book: Physics: a science in search of an ontology.
The dominance of Einsteinian and Darwinian thinking in the world of physics bars any suggestion of claiming circumstances exist that could point to an instantaneous reality because it would contradict the law that nothing travels faster than the speed of light.
The atom bomb equation (e=mc2) is sighted as proof of Einstein’s theories however it was derived from Maxwell’s equations long before.
Sir Roger Penrose, a highly respected Nobel prize winning mathematician and physicist has been moved to say quantum mechanics is no longer an incomplete theory, as Einstein claimed, but that quantum mechanics is incorrect! What else could he say after Bells Theorum has evidentially come down on the opposite side of the argument.
Wolfgang Smith was an exceptional graduate of Cornell University New York majoring in Physics, Mathematics and Philosophy at the age of eighteen. He died in 2024 in California aged 94.
I submit that his explanation of reality is today’s best explanation.
As a reminder ‘best explanation’ refers to Inference of the Best Explanation which can be understood as follows:
A One considers multiple possible explanations for a phenomenon or event;
B One evaluates these explanations based on criteria like simplicity, coherence, explanatory power, and consistency with known facts; and
C One then selects the explanation that best accounts for the available evidence as the "best" one.
I propose that Dr Wolgang Smith be the successor to two previous fathers of science. This would mean the historical perspective looks like this:
Newton - Enlightenment;
Darwin - Democritus
Smith - Plato
I hereby declare Dr Smith as the Father of Platonic Science: the science of the future as the reign of quantity without recourse comes to an end.
Note:
Wolfgang Smith - The Father of Platonic Science - Philos-Sophia Initiative Foundation