In philosophy, theophysics is an approach to

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...

that attempts to reconcile

physical cosmology Physical cosmology is a branch of cosmology concerned with the study of cosmological models. A cosmological model, or simply cosmology, provides a description of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and allows study of f ...

and

religious cosmology Religious cosmology is an explanation of the origin, evolution, and eventual fate of the universe from a religious perspective. This may include beliefs on origin in the form of a creation myth, subsequent evolution, current organizational form ...

. It is related to physicotheology, the difference between them being that the aim of physicotheology is to derive theology from physics, whereas that of theophysics is to unify physics and theology.

Usage

(2002) uses the term in a critique of physicotheology, i.e. the view that arguments for the

existence of God The existence of God (or more generally, the existence of deities) is a subject of debate in theology, philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God or deities can be categorize ...

can be derived from the existence of the physical world (e.g. the "

argument from design The teleological argument (from ; also known as physico-theological argument, argument from design, or intelligent design argument) is an argument for the existence of God or, more generally, that complex functionality in the natural world wh ...

"). Theophysics would be the opposite approach, i.e. an approach to the material world informed by the knowledge that it is created by God.

Richard H. Popkin Richard Henry Popkin (December 27, 1923 – April 14, 2005) was an American academic philosopher who specialized in the history of enlightenment philosophy and early modern anti-dogmatism. His 1960 work ''The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to ...

(1990) applies the term to the "spiritual physics" of

Cambridge Platonist The Cambridge Platonists were an influential group of Platonist philosophers and Christian theologians at the University of Cambridge that existed during the 17th century. The leading figures were Ralph Cudworth and Henry More. Group and its nam ...

Henry More Henry More (; 12 October 1614 – 1 September 1687) was an English philosopher of the Cambridge Platonist school. Biography Henry was born in Grantham, Lincolnshire on 12 October 1614. He was the seventh son of Alexander More, mayor of Gran ...

and his pupil and collaborator Lady Anne Conway,Richard H. Popkin, "The Spiritualistic Cosmologies of Henry More and Anne Conway", in (ed.), ''Henry More (1614–1687): Tercentenary Studies''. Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 1990, p. 105. who enthusiastically accepted the new science, but rejected the various forms of materialist mechanism proposed by Descartes,

Hobbes Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book ''Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influe ...

and

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, ...

to buttress it,Popkin, "Cosmologies", p. 98. as these, More and Conway argued, were incapable of explaining productive causality.Popkin, "Cosmologies", p. 111. Instead, More and Conway offered what Popkin calls "a genuine important alternative to modern mechanistic thought", "a thoroughly scientific view with a metaphysics of spirits to make everything operate". Materialist mechanism triumphed, however, and today their spiritual cosmology, as Popkin notes, "looks very odd indeed". The term has been applied by some philosophers to the system of

Emanuel Swedenborg Emanuel Swedenborg (, ; born Emanuel Swedberg; 29 March 1772) was a Swedish pluralistic-Christian theologian, scientist, philosopher and mystic. He became best known for his book on the afterlife, ''Heaven and Hell'' (1758). Swedenborg had a ...

. William Denovan (1889) wrote in '' Mind'': "The highest stage of his revelation might be denominated ''Theophysics'', or the science of Divine purpose in creation." R. M. Wenley (1910) referred to Swedenborg as "the Swedish theophysicist". Pierre Laberge (1972) observes that

Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aest ...

's famous critique of physicotheology in the '' Critique of Pure Reason'' (1781; second edition 1787) has tended to obscure the fact that in his early work, ''General History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens'' (1755), Kant defended a physicotheology that at the time was startlingly original, but that succeeded only to the extent that it concealed what Laberge terms a theophysics ("ce que nous appellerons une ''théophysique''"). Theophysics is a fundamental concept in the thought of

Raimon Panikkar Raimon Panikkar Alemany, also known as Raimundo Panikkar and Raymond Panikkar (November 2, 1918 – August 26, 2010), was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest and a proponent of Interfaith dialogue. As a scholar, he specialized in comparative reli ...

, who wrote in ''Ontonomía de la ciencia'' (1961) that he was looking for "a theological vision of Science that is not a

Metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

, but a Theophysics.... It is not a matter of a Physics 'of God', but rather of the 'God of the Physical'; of God the creator of the world... not the world as autonomous being, independent and disconnected from God, but rather ontonomicly linked to Him". As a vision of "Science as theology", it became central to Panikkar's "cosmotheandric" view of reality. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point theory (1994), which identifies concepts from

with theistic concepts, is sometimes referred to by the term,Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist
/ref> although not by Tipler himself. Tipler was an atheist when he wrote '' The Anthropic Cosmological Principle'' (1986, co-authored with

John D. Barrow John David Barrow (29 November 1952 – 26 September 2020) was an English cosmologist, theoretical physicist, and mathematician. He served as Gresham Professor of Geometry at Gresham College from 2008 to 2011. Barrow was also a writer of pop ...

, whose many popular books seldom mention theology) and '' The Physics of Immortality'' (1994), but a Christian when he wrote ''The Physics of Christianity'' (2007). In 1989,

Wolfhart Pannenberg Wolfhart Pannenberg (2 October 1928 – 4 September 2014) was a German Lutheran theologian. He made a number of significant contributions to modern theology, including his concept of history as a form of revelation centered on the resurre ...

, a

liberal theologian Liberal Christianity, also known as Liberal Theology and historically as Christian Modernism (see Catholic modernism and Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy), is a movement that interprets Christian teaching by taking into consideration ...

in the continental

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

tradition, welcomed Tipler's work on cosmology as raising "the prospect of a rapprochement between physics and theology in the area of

eschatology Eschatology (; ) concerns expectations of the end of the present age, human history, or of the world itself. The end of the world or end times is predicted by several world religions (both Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic), which teach that nega ...

". In subsequent essays, while not concurring with all the details of Tipler's discussion, Pannenberg has defended the theology of the Omega Point. The term is also occasionally used as a

nonce word A nonce word (also called an occasionalism) is a lexeme created for a single occasion to solve an immediate problem of communication.''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of The English Language''. Ed. David Crystal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ...

in parodies or humorous contexts, as by

Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxle ...

in '' Antic Hay'' (1923).Aldous Huxley,
Antic Hay
', Chapter I, third paragraph.

References

, 1992. ''Cosmos, Bios, Theos Scientists Reflect on Science, God, and the Origins of the Universe, Life, and Homo sapiens''. Open Court. * E. A. Milne, 1952. ''Modern Cosmology and the Christian Idea of God''. Oxford Univ. Press. * Arthur Peacocke, 1979. ''Creation and the World of Science''. * John Polkinghorne, 1994. ''The Faith of a Physicist''. Princeton Univ. Press. *---------, 1998. '' Science and Theology''. . *---------, 2000. '' Faith, Science and Understanding''. Yale University Press. ; . * awrence Poole 2003, "SELF-Empowerment", , IQ Press. *Saunders, Nicholas, 2002. '' Divine Action and Modern Science''. Cambridge Univ. Press. *

Russell Stannard Russell Stannard, (December 24.5 1931 – 4 July 2022) was a British high-energy particle physicist. Stannard was born in London, England, on December 24.5 1931. He held the position of Professor Emeritus of Physics at the Open University. I ...

, 1999. ''The God Experiment''. Faber. The 1987–88 Gifford lectures. *

Richard Swinburne Richard Granville Swinburne (IPA ) (born December 26, 1934) is an English philosopher. He is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Over the last 50 years Swinburne has been a proponent of philosophical arguments for ...

, 2004 (1979). ''The Existence of God''. * Frank J. Tipler, 1994. ''The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead''. Doubleday. . * --------, 2007. ''The Physics of Christianity''. Doubleday. {{ISBN, 0-385-51424-7
Chapter I and excerpt from Chapter II.
Chapter I also availabl
here.
*

Charles Hard Townes Charles Hard Townes (July 28, 1915 – January 27, 2015) was an American physicist. Townes worked on the theory and application of the maser, for which he obtained the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics associated wi ...

, 1966,
The Convergence of Science and Religion
" ''Think''. * Simon Sam Gutierrez, 1991, The Solomon Formula insaecula saeculorum: A Theophysical Find
TXu000559229

External links

Theophysics
A website mainly about Tipler's Omega Point Theory, with links to short nontechnical articles mostly by Tipler, but also some by Deutsch and Pannenberg.
entertheophysics
A website containing the 12 principles of Theophysics as explained by the author, training consultant and conference speaker Lawrence Poole. Poole also relates several applications of Theophysics including a "unified field formula". Religion and science Religious cosmologies

Usage

See also

References

Further reading

External links