II. Pedia Sapiens: A Planetary Progeny Comes to Her/His Own Actual Factual Twintelligent Knowledge

3. The Song Book of Naturome: A New Translation

Rieppel, Olivier. Evolutionary Theory and the Creation Controversy. Berlin: Springer, 2011. The Curator of Evolutionary Biology at the Field Museum of Chicago surveys the human endeavor from biblical times to the scientific renaissances of astronomy, physics, and life’s long duration, as it wrestled with and split between two options. Are we (always male practitioners) learning about a Creator and extant creation, with its own independent, eternal laws, a First Cause, or just a mechanistic contingency that offers no sense of source, guidance, or purpose. The “Two Books of Bible and Nature” became “enshrined” in this service through the centuries, quite valid in the 1800s of Chambers, Owen and Darwin. This deepest issue of something or nothing, a creative doubleness or material singleness, remains unresolved to this day.

Science seeks to discover the laws of nature. Historically, such laws of nature were understood as ‘secondary causes,’ enacted by a ‘First Cause.’ Such an understanding of natural laws resulted in the ‘metaphor of the two books.’ The Creator revealed himself through the Book of Revelation as much as through the Book of Nature. Exhaustive knowledge of the laws of nature would lead all the way back to knowledge of the First Cause. On this account, the study of nature would provide insights into moral and ethical issues. The attempt to derive what ‘ought to be’ from what ‘just is’ constituted a major roadblock preventing the acceptance of a materialistic conception of nature in general, and of theories of species transformation based on nothing but natural causes in particular. Laws of nature, enacted by a First cause, would be universal laws, imparting necessity on the natural course of events. Universal laws are timeless, and so would be nature that is governed by them. (81)

Robinson, Andrew and Christopher Southgate. Introduction: Toward a Metaphysic of Meaning. Zygon. 45/2, 2010. The British theologian editors orient papers within a “God and the World of Signs: Semiotics and the Emergence of Life” section (search Hoffmeyer) upon a sense that “biosemiotic” information can offer crucial insights upon nature’s essence. Thus the universe in its evolutionary vector becomes a progressive process of signification, interpretation and recognition. In such regard, the unique ability and creative role of human reflection is seen to fulfill God’s self-revelation.

Our overall idea is that the fundamental structure of the world is exactly that required for the emergence of meaning and truth-bearing representation. We understand the emergence of a capacity to interpret an environment to be important to the emergence of life, and we see the subsequent history of biological evolution as a story of increasing capacities for meaning making and meaning seeking. Theologically, we understand God to be the ground of all such meaning making and the ultimate goal of the universe's emerging capacity for interpreting signs. (339)

Our overall idea, one with profound theological undertones, is the fundamental structure of the world is exactly the structure that is required for the emergence of meaning and truth-bearing representation. We understand the emergence of entities capable of interpreting their environments to mark the emergence of life, or at least protolife, and we see the subsequent history of biological evolution as a story of increasing capacities for meaning making and meaning seeking. (340)

Sarukkai, Sundar. Translating the World. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002. If nature can in fact be conceived as textual in kind, then the activity of researchers is essentially to read, discern and cross-translate. By this view, each human encounter, whether scientific, mythic, philosophical or religious, might appear as an interpretation of one extant creation and thus gain a hidden commonality.

In particular, the image of the world as an open book held by many scientists actually suggests that the world is first presented on the order of an original text, and writing science should be seen as writing the text of the original. (xvii)

Schor, Esther. Bridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2016. In a unique work akin to George Steiner’s After Babel, the Princeton University professor of English travels the Poland to Kazakhstan to Serbia, 19th to 21st century, nexus of this prime endeavor to achieve a common vernacular for all peoples. A compelling story of people and places engaged in a hopeful betterment, whose latest frontier may be a cooperative village in Brazil. As with Steiner, Umberto Eco, Jorge Borges, and many over the centuries, the deep incentive is to somehow both glimpse nature’s original numinous script so as to reveal, heal and unify a suffering humanity.

Selcer, Daniel. Philosophy and the Book. London: Continuum, 2010. With doses of trendy postmodernism, a Duquesne University philosopher achieves an historical survey of imaginations of an inherently literal nature, such as Gottfried Liebniz’s encyclopedia and Jacques Derrida’s grammatology, and much before, in between, and beyond. At its crux may be seen a wonderment as to whether there might be a repetitive outline format that would serve to illume and arrange creation.

The “book of the world” figure may render nature intelligible by modeling natural philosophical investigation on scriptural exegesis. It may also serve to spiritualize a seemingly secular natural philosophical practice by framing it as the revelation of a still-hidden divine handwriting, thereby producing a textualization of nature that is, in fact, its metonymic investment with theological principle. (10)

Thus, the infinitely complex and mutually implicated relationships reflected in the structure of each of the terms are what generate the categories of the encyclopedia. Because every substantial proposition contains an entire world – because every truth mirrors the universe of knowledge from a particular perspective – the repetition of all truths in every truth and every truth in all truths….Rather than seek a model for the encyclopedia that avoids the problem of repetition, the Leibnizian encyclopedia takes conceptual repetition as its organizing principle. (81)

Shankweiler, Donald and Carol Fowler. Relations between Reading and Speech Manifest Universal Phonological Principle. Annual Review of Linguistics. 5/109, 2019. Phonology is concerned with the systematic organizations of sounds in spoken languages. Senior University of Connecticut psycholinguists cite recent recognitions of a common, recurrent pattern across all manner of dialects and alphabets which is then seen to take on letter detail and contextual image complements. See also Computational Modeling of Phonological Learning by Gaja Jarosz in the same volume.

All writing systems represent speech, and a way to record each word of a message. This is achieved by symbolizing the phonological forms of spoken words as well as information conveying grammar and meaning. Alphabetic systems represent the segmental phonology by providing symbols for individual consonants and vowels. In all cases, learning to read requires a discovery of the forms of language that writing encodes, drawing on metalinguistic abilities not needed for the acquisition of speech. Therefore, learning to read is harder and rarer than acquiring speech. Research reveals that skilled readers of every orthography access phonological language forms automatically and early in word reading. Although reading processes differ according to the cognitive demands of specific orthographic forms, the differences are subservient to the universal phonologic principle that all readers access. (Abstract)

Shapin, Stephen. The Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Much of its motivation came from the Reformation insistence on a direct, dual reading of both scripture and of the natural world, rather than relying just on authority.

Sherwin, Byron. Golems Among Us. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004. A rabbinical scholar draws upon Judaic wisdom in search of necessary guidance for the potentials of artificial intelligence to mold robotic entities, traditionally known as golems. To complement liber scripturae, a second liber naturae is recommended as it finally becoming comprehensible to humankind. The universe is to be properly appreciated as a Divine creation and natural scripture, which people can read, write and contribute to as co-creators. An important, unique work. See also Sherwin’s Jewish Ethics for the Twenty-First Century (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000.)

Medieval Jewish and Christian philosophers, theologians, and scientists, such as Augustine, Gersonides, and Galileo, described God as the author of two books, Scripture and Nature. In this view, the theologian and the scientist share a common vocation: to decode the book written by God. (48) In this view, creation is a process initiated, but not completed, by God. Human beings have a divine mandate to act as “God’s partners in the work of creation,”… (53)

Steiner, George. After Babel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. This classic of academic scholarship remains one of the best engagements with our deep human penchant for diverse linguistic conversation and discursive textuality. Its wide-ranging, lucid survey from an original Logos and Kabbalistic emblems to G. Liebniz’s universal characters, J. Borges’ library and much more conveys a constant quest to recover a once and future Adamic Ur-Sprache.

Stroumsa, Guy. The Scriptural Universe of Ancient Christianity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem emeritus professor of comparative religion presents a thorough essay on how much this original religion broadly conceived, and subsequent literary cultures, are founded upon and infused by sacred inscribed codicies, books, testaments, and so on.

Swidler, Leonard. Humankind from the Age of Monologue to the Age of Global Dialogue. Journal of Ecumenical Studies. 47/3, 2012. A renowned innovative theologian, the Temple University emeritus professor of interreligious dialogue, and founder of the Dialogue Institute, continues in our polarizing century to speak of and strive for deep commonalities of belief, understanding, and hope. Swidler, now 83, cites his longtime friend and colleague (and mine also) the Fordham University theologian Ewert Cousins (1927-2009) with regard to an imminent Global Integration after the Abrahamic Axial Age of a more individualist cast. In regard, the Spring 2012 Teilhard Perspective newsletter of the American Teilhard Association (Google for ATA site and online TP), which I edited for years including this issue, contains reviews of Cousins’ writings, along with companion works by Raimon Panikkar, Nicholas Rescher, and many others, apropos these old and new Axial Ages.

The Cosmic Dance of Dialogue As we know, “dialogue” comes from the Greek dia-logos, usually explained as meaning “word” (logos) across, between, together. The Ur-meaning of logos is “thinking.” Thus, we have in English (and German) the term “logic” and a myriad of words ending in logos, such as theology, geology, psychology, anthology – all meaning the “study” of, the “thinking about,” a particular subject. Hence, dialogue fundamentally means, “thinking together.” However, this pattern that is so central to humanity is but a higher reflection of a core part of the entire cosmos, starting at its very foundation and rising to humanity and – many religions, including Christianity, would say – even to its source and Goal, Ultimate Reality, which they claim is essentially dialogic in a triune fashion. (465)

Tansella-Nitti, Giuseppe. The Two Books Prior to the Scientific Revolution. Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith. 57/3, 2005. An astronomer, theologian and priest provides a detailed history of the venerable concept of two distinct modes of human edification. One is given textual scripture, liber scripturae, while the other is a natural creation made to be deciphered and understood, liber naturae. A first renaissance circa the middle age 14th century was graced by studies of these dual entries by Hugh of St. Victor, St. Bonaventure, Raimundo de Sebunde, among others. At the 17th century start of the scientific revolution, the book of nature was famously relevant for Galileo, Newton, and Francis Bacon. Fr. Tansella-Nitti concludes that a sensitivity that …the world can be read, that it contains a message, that the universe reveals a “cosmic code”… remains valid and merits recovery in our late day.

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