KOZMIK ANARCHY
The
following passage from Peter Kropotkin's essay "Anarchism:
its Philosophy and Ideal", published in San Francisco by Free
Society, 1898, is, to my mind, one of his
greatest insights (note the date he wrote this):
"As
to the harmony that the human mind discovers in Nature, and which harmony is,
on the whole, but the verification of a certain stability of phenomena, the
modern man of science no doubt recognizes it more than ever. But he no longer
tries to explain it by the action of laws conceived according to a certain plan
preestablished by an intelligent will.
What
used to be called "natural law" is nothing but a certain relation
among phenomena which we dimly see, and each "law" takes a temporary
character of causality; that is to say: If such a phenomenon is produced under
such conditions, such another phenomenon will follow. No law placed outside the
phenomena: each phenomenon governs that which follows it-not law.
Nothing
preconceived in what we call harmony in Nature. The chance of collisions and
encounters has sufficed to establish it. Such a phenomenon will last for
centuries because the adaption, the equilibrium it represents has taken
centuries to be established; while such another will last but an instant if
that form of momentary equilibrium was born in an instant. If the planets of
our solar system do not collide with one another and do not destroy one another
every day, if they last millions of years, it is because they represent an
equilibrium that has taken millions of centuries to establish as a resultant of
millions of blind forces. If continents are not continually destroyed by
volcanic shocks, it is because they have taken thousands and thousands of
centuries to build up, molecule by molecule, and to take their present shape.
But lightning will only last an instant; because it represents a momentary
rupture of the equilibrium, a sudden redistribution of force."
Anarchy,
as Hakim Bey has said, is an ontological principle. Anarchy is not merely
socio-economic-political. The political ramifications are only a very small
subset of a cosmic truth. The Anarchist is the person who can "go with the
flow" of cosmic, ontological Anarchy.
How can we reconcile what
Kropotkin wrote in the passage quoted above with intelligent design? The
passage seems to speak of purely random configurations.
First, we should mention
that absolute randomness clearly does not reign. There is a tendency to
agglomerate and configure built into the universe.
Most think of ID as
meaning that *one* plan has been put into effect by a super-intelligence and
that that one plan is being played out in strict observance of the master plan,
detail-by-detail.
At least in the Jewish
tradition, the only tradition that I feel it is my place to represent; that is
not the meaning of intelligent design.
"God was angered at the trees in the Garden of Eden because
He* commanded them to be fruit trees, but they took it upon themselves to grow
as fruit-bearing trees.
*[I use the gender-neutral pronouns 'It' and 'That' to designate God, but
I was quoting the midrash (homily).]
The Rabbis explain that
it was God's intention that the whole tree be the edible fruit, not just the
fruity things on the branches.
My attitude to this was:
"yeah, right". That's because I didn't begin to understand what the midrash was saying.
Then came along a Rabbi
and explained the meaning of the midrash, much to my
edification and embarrassment at my arrogance and ignorance.
He explained: The midrash speaks of cause and effect. The early stages of
creation allowed for the possibility of a world in which there was no cause and
effect. Cause and effect are not necessary developments or characteristics of
the world. They could have been one and the same. There need not have been any separation
or delay between a cause and its effect/s, or for that matter, the inverse, any
given effect/s and its/their causes. There could have been a world of maximal
what we call today "entanglement".
Time, forces, differentiation and discrete bodies could either not have
formed at all, or formed in different configurations that would not have
allowed for cause and effect. There could have been, therefore, a world in
which laboriousness and enslavement were impossible. God was angered because
the universe developed cause and effect and it did, thus creating the
conditions wherein beings could be enslaved.
Creation, we learn from
this midrash, was granted a goodly measure of
independence and the ability to determine the forms it would take. It took on
configurations that would allow for cause and effect, to wit: time, forces,
differentiation and discrete entities as we know them.
At the time that the
midrash was articulated, the terms 'cause',
'effect', 'differentiation', and
'entanglement', all of those terms I can now employ to make this matter sound
rational to those who have to have matters that are super-rational translated
to them into rational terms, had not yet been coined.
The Rabbis were able to
understand the principles and the phenomena in and of themselves, but they did
not yet have the terminology to express it in the way that is accepted nowadays
as "rational".
They had presaged what
physics is working on by over 2000 years, but they didn't speak like
physicists.
So, they explained the matter
homiletically, allegorically."
To complete the
demonstration that "randomness" and ID do not contradict and
strengthen the concept that nature itself is free to determine itself (within
limits); I'll herein quote Tractate AVOT,
or PIRKEI AVOT usually translated, inaccurately, as "Wisdom of the
Fathers", Chapter III, Verse 15:
"Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is granted;
the world is judged with goodness, and everything according to the
preponderance of deeds."
This is a remarkable passage.
It means that while God knows what will occur, that which will occur is not
predetermined. Freedom is built into the system and nature itself if free to
form "randomly". The possibility of goodness and otherwise too is
built into nature itself and nature is free to take on configurations that will
be propitious or not.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel