Naturalistic pantheism, also known as scientific pantheism, is a form of

pantheism Pantheism is the belief that reality, the universe and the cosmos are identical with divinity and a supreme supernatural being or entity, pointing to the universe as being an immanent creator deity still expanding and creating, which has ...

. It has been used in various ways such as to relate

God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

or divinity with concrete things, determinism,Paul Tillich: Theologian of the Boundaries by

Paul Tillich Paul Johannes Tillich (August 20, 1886 – October 22, 1965) was a German-American Christian existentialist philosopher, religious socialist, and Lutheran Protestant theologian who is widely regarded as one of the most influential theolo ...

, Mark K. Taylor, Mark Lewis Taylor, Collins, 1987, p. 165 or the substance of the

universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the univers ...

.Panentheism--The Other God of the Philosophers, John W. Cooper, Baker Academic, 2006, p. 39 God, from these perspectives, is seen as the aggregate of all unified natural phenomena. The phrase has often been associated with the philosophy of

Baruch Spinoza Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, ...

,''The history of European philosophy: an introductory book'' by Walter Taylor Marvin, Macmillan Company, 1917, p. 325: “Naturalistic pantheism had already made its appearance in the sixteenth century and most notably in the writings of Giordano Bruno; but its most famous teacher was the seventeenth century philosopher Benedict Spinoza.” although academics differ on how it is used.

Component definitions

The term “pantheism" is derived from Greek words ''pan'' (Greek: πᾶν) meaning "all" and ''theos'' (θεός) meaning God. It was coined by

Joseph Raphson Joseph Raphson (c. 1668 – c. 1715) was an English mathematician and intellectual known best for the Newton–Raphson method. Biography Very little is known about Raphson's life. Connor and Robertson give his date of birth as 1668 based on a 1 ...

in his work ''De spatio reali'', published in 1697. The term was introduced to English by Irish writer

John Toland John Toland (30 November 167011 March 1722) was an Irish rationalist philosopher and freethinker, and occasional satirist, who wrote numerous books and pamphlets on political philosophy and philosophy of religion, which are early expressions o ...

in his 1705 work ''Socinianism Truly Stated, by a pantheist'' that described pantheism as the "opinion of those who believe in no other eternal being but the universe." The term "naturalistic" derives from the word " naturalism", which has several meanings in philosophy and aesthetics.A Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. T. Mautner, Blackwell, 1996 In philosophy the term frequently denotes the view that everything belongs to the world of nature and can be studied with the methods appropriate for studying that world, ''i.e.'' the sciences. It generally implies an absence of belief in supernatural beings.

Early conceptions

Joseph Needham Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham (; 9 December 1900 – 24 March 1995) was a British biochemist, historian of science and sinologist known for his scientific research and writing on the history of Chinese science and technology, i ...

, a modern British scholar of Chinese philosophy and science, has identified

Taoism Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the '' Ta ...

as "a naturalistic pantheism which emphasizes the unity and spontaneity of the operations of Nature." This philosophy can be dated to the late 4th century BCE. The Hellenistic Greek philosophical school of

Stoicism Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century BCE. It is a philosophy of personal virtue ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world, asserting tha ...

(which started in the early 3rd century BCE)Stoicism
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. rejected the dualist idea of the separate ideal/conscious and material realms, and identified the substance of God with the entire cosmos and heaven. However, not all philosophers who did so can be classified as naturalistic pantheists.

Modern conceptions

Naturalistic pantheism was expressed by various thinkers, including

Giordano Bruno Giordano Bruno (; ; la, Iordanus Brunus Nolanus; born Filippo Bruno, January or February 1548 – 17 February 1600) was an Italian philosopher, mathematician, poet, cosmological theorist, and Hermetic occultist. He is known for his cosmolog ...

, who was burned at the stake for his views. However, the 17th century Dutch philosopher Spinoza became particularly known for it.

Baruch Spinoza

Possibly drawing upon the ideas of Descartes,

connected God and Nature through the phrase ''deus sive natura'' ("God, or Nature"), making him the father of classical pantheism. He relied upon rationalism rather than the more intuitive approach of some Eastern traditions. Spinoza's philosophy, sometimes known as

Spinozism Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, b ...

, has been understood in a number of ways, and caused disagreements such as the

Pantheism controversy The pantheism controversy (german: Pantheismusstreit), also known as ''Spinozismusstreit'' or ''Spinozastreit'', refers to the 1780s debates in German intellectual life that discussed the merits of Spinoza's "pantheistic" conception of God. What ...

. However, many scholars have considered it to be a form of naturalistic pantheism. This has included viewing the pantheistic unity as natural. Others focus on the deterministic aspect of naturalism. Spinoza inspired a number of other pantheists, with varying degrees of idealism towards nature. However, Spinoza's influence in his own time was limited. Scholars have considered Spinoza the founder of a line of naturalistic pantheism, though not necessarily the only one.

Others

In 1705 the Irish writer

endorsed a form of pantheism in which the God-soul is identical with the material universe. German naturalist

Ernst Haeckel Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new s ...

(1834–1919) proposed a monistic pantheism in which the idea of God is identical with that of nature or substance. The World Pantheist Movement, started in 1999, describes Naturalistic Pantheism as including reverence for the universe,

realism Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to: In the arts *Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts Arts movements related to realism include: * Classical Realism *Literary realism, a mov ...

, strong naturalism, and respect for reason and the scientific method as methods of understanding the world. Paul Harrison considers its position the closest modern equivalent to Toland's.

References