I have greatly enjoyed the
various Star Trek series and movies over the years; and I can
still remember the excitement I felt as a nerdy teenager when I first
bought a book explaining all the details of the original Star Trek
series. But one little complaint I have about the various
incarnations of Star Trek is that none of them seems to have a
spiritual bone in the body. While we may see what seems to be an
occasional ghost or a spirit in Star Trek, it is always
eventually explained away in non-spiritual terms. There is a hint of
spirituality in the fifth Star Trek movie, involving a search for
God, but the “god” turns out to be some rather malevolent local
entity. About the only spiritual things I can remember in the many
versions of Star Trek is the empathic ability of counselor
Deanna Troi, who has an apparently psychic ability to sense other
people's feelings, and also a similar ability Spock briefly displays
in one episode of the original Star Trek series, in which he
senses the distant deaths of fellow Vulcans in a starship.
But the Star Wars
series of movies has much greater spirituality, for in them we have
the recurrent theme of the Force. Here is how Obi-Wan Kenobi
first describes the Force in the first Star Wars movie:
The Force is what gives
a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things.
It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.
Yoda
the Jedi master of the Force explains it this way: “Life creates
it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us."
In the Star Wars
movies, the Force is associated with psychic powers such as telepathy
and psychokinesis. The masters of the Force known as Jedi can
influence the minds of others through thought suggestion, as Obi-Wan
Kenobi does when he gets out of a jam by telepathically influencing the mind
of security guard. A Jedi can also sense distant important events
by sensing a disturbance in the Force, as Obi-Wan does
when he detects a “great disturbance in the Force” when the Death
Star destroys a distant planet. A Jedi can even use the force to
move objects such as a light saber. Someone can also use the Force
to achieve things he could never normally do, such as when Luke
Skywalker uses the Force to help him perform the difficult task of
blowing up the Death Star.
I can't help thinking that
in this idea of the Force there is the seed of a great philosophical
theory. You could probably use the idea of the Force as a kind of
launching pad or springboard to create a very interesting and viable
philosophical theory, although you would probably need to go off in a
direction rather different from the way the Force is depicted in Star
Wars.
Here is why the idea of a
cosmic life-force seems worthy of exploring. Life in the universe has
done and continues to do astonishing things that we cannot explain.
Contrary to the overconfident dogmatic claims of many a scientist, we
cannot explain the origin of life from inanimate matter, nor can we
explain how life achieved such astonishingly coordinated complexity.
Shallow generalizations such as “fit stuff prospers, and unfit
stuff doesn't” (a concise way of stating the principle of natural
selection) are not at all sufficient to explain the intricate
machinery we see within cells and the astonishingly improbable
three-dimensional shapes of protein molecules.
We don't even understand
how life behaves the way it now behaves. No one can give a coherent
explanation of how it is that a tiny fertilized ovum is able to
progress to become a baby. DNA is written in a “bare bones”
language that seems to be incapable of stating the instructions for
such a progression to occur. What we have in DNA is mainly lists of
chemicals and on/off switches, but not either a three-dimensional
blueprint nor a sequential series of instructions for building
complex three-dimensional objects such as a human body.
So from an explanatory
standpoint it would be great if there were some cosmic life force that could
help us to explain such things. Such a force might or might not be
intelligent. Perhaps it might just follow general rules. We know that
the cosmic force of electromagnetism follows a set of rules, but no
one thinks electromagnetism is a conscious agent.
A cosmic life force seems
rather plausible when one considers that we already know of four
cosmic forces, the four fundamental forces of physics (gravitation,
the weak nuclear force, the strong nuclear force, and
electromagnetism). But those cosmic forces are merely necessary
conditions for the appearance of complex life; they are not
sufficient conditions for such an appearance. (A necessary condition is
something that must be present for something else to exist, but does
not guarantee its existence; a sufficient condition for that thing is
something that guarantees that it will exist.) From an explanatory
standpoint, it would be useful to postulate some cosmic life force
that acts as a sufficient condition for the appearance of life.
Such a life force might
play a role in the appearance of every complex living thing. It could
be that the progression from a fertilized ovum to a human baby would
never occur without inputs from some cosmic life force. If so,
perhaps the Star Wars movies get things a little backwards
when they suggest that life creates the Force. Perhaps it is more
like: the Force creates life.
A mysterious cosmic
life-force might also help us explain various paranormal psychic
anomalies that materialist scientists have tried to sweep under the
rug. Their rug has a great big person-sized bump from all the
paranormal anomalies they have swept under it.
Some might like to believe
in a cosmic life-force as kind of an alternative to believing in an
active deity, although one could believe in both without
contradiction. A deity wishing for life to exist throughout a vast
universe might create some kind of cosmic life-force to reduce the
need for divine interventions to be constantly occurring throughout
the vast cosmos, just as a man might create a robot to do some of
his work.
Here are three suggestions
I would give to any philosophical thinker trying to create a theory
of a cosmic life force.
Emphasize the
explanatory value of such a force. Why believe in a cosmic life
force? It won't do to say, “It's a useful plot device.” But if
one can describe how postulating such a force might fill some of the
holes in our understanding of the universe's evolution and
unexplained psychic phenomena, such a cosmic life force becomes much
more plausible.
Dump the dark side of
the force. In the Star Wars movies we often hear that
there is a dark side of the force that leads people to evil. While
that's a great plot device, I wouldn't think that it should have any
place in a philosophical theory of a cosmic life-force. Evil can
easily be explained by garden-variety stupidity and selfishness. We
don't need a mysterious cosmic force to explain that.
Democratize the force.
In the Star Wars movies the Force has rather elitist
connotations. The idea is that the Force can be channeled by only an
elite few, the Jedi masters. A more appealing idea would be if
everyone could somehow use a cosmic life-force to benefit in some way.
If a philosophical thinker
advances a theory of a cosmic life-force, that person is advancing a form what
is called vitalism. Vitalism was rather popular in the nineteenth
century, but vitalism has been officially declared extinct by modern
biologists. But don't be deterred by that. Below is a translation of
the type of things the modern biologist will say about vitalism.
Assertions | Translation |
Vitalism used to be rather popular, but it was killed off when DNA was discovered. No scientist believes in any type of vitalism any more. It's a dead duck. Don't even think about digging up this dead horse from its grave ! | It is officially forbidden for you to advance any theory that some life force or vital force is needed to explain the appearance or workings of life. This is a taboo that cannot be violated. Anyone advancing such an idea is a damnable heretic who has committed a thought crime in violation of official orthodoxy. |
What happened was that
scientists declared vitalism dead in the 1950's on the ground that
they had discovered “the secret of life” by discovering DNA. But
DNA is only one of the many secrets of life, many of which are undiscovered. The human genome has
been thoroughly analyzed, and we seem to have just as many unanswered
questions about life as before DNA was discovered. The discovery and
analysis of DNA has shed no light on the origin of life, and has made
that origin seem all the more puzzling, since new questions were
raised such as: where does the genetic code come from, and how could
the first DNA have appeared? And DNA has not explained the mystery of
morphogenesis, the mystery of how a fertilized ovum manages to
progress to become a human baby. Nor has DNA done very much to
explain the mysteries of the human mind. For reasons discussed here, such basic questions as
“where and how is the body plan for humans stored?” have not been answered by studying DNA, which is mainly a list of chemicals which
has neither a three-dimensional layout for body plans nor a
sequential set of procedural instructions for building bodies.
Given the persistent
mysteries of life, there is still tons of room for a vitalistic
philosophy based on the idea of some cosmic life-force. Claiming that
DNA's discovery explains life's workings is like saying you can
explain the strange workings of the US Congress once you have
discovered a building plan for the US Capitol building.
The Chinese have long had
a theory of a vital force, one that they call qi or chi. Such a
concept has been widely held for centuries, and has many serious
adherents who claim to have evidence for it, in the form of medical
benefits produced by making use of such a vital force. I cannot claim
to have studied the evidence for such claims, so I won't say anything
either for them or against them.
Postscript: Although the latest Star Wars movie seems to have little emphasis on the Force (despite its title), in Episode 1 of the series (The Phantom Menace) it is remarkable how far the concept is developed. One character says he is sure it is "the will of the Force" that Anakin Skywalker be trained as a Jedi. And when Anakin's mother is asked who is the father of Anakin, she says there was "no father," causing the movie viewer to get the idea that perhaps the Force can cause a virgin birth.
Postscript: Although the latest Star Wars movie seems to have little emphasis on the Force (despite its title), in Episode 1 of the series (The Phantom Menace) it is remarkable how far the concept is developed. One character says he is sure it is "the will of the Force" that Anakin Skywalker be trained as a Jedi. And when Anakin's mother is asked who is the father of Anakin, she says there was "no father," causing the movie viewer to get the idea that perhaps the Force can cause a virgin birth.
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