Book Review: The Trinity and an Entangled World

Dialog, 2014

Rocznik Filozoficzny Ignatianum , 2018

When popular physicist Stephen Hawking dreams at the end of his best-selling Brief History of Time of a Great Unifying Theory (GUT) which would be able to merge the major physical theories describing the laws of nature, he goes on to say: “However, if we discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable by everyone, not just by a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we should know the mind of God.” John Polkinghorne, Hawking’s colleague at Cambridge University, is on the one hand critical of such an approach. “What is God doing in the book at all?” On the other hand, he is himself searching for his own very particular version of a GUT. “There is indeed a Theory of Everything, but a theory that is much grander and more comprehensive and intellectually satisfying than any Grand Unified Theory of Particle Physics could ever be.” For former particle physicist Polkinghorne, this theory is his new field of work: theology. How does he come to this?

Science and Christian Belief, 2019

Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 2017

Journal of Cosmology, 2012

As an experiment in constructive transdisciplinary relationality, a theology of nonseparable difference here engages a physics of quantum entanglement. The metaphoric potential of “spooky action at a distance” to intensify a cosmology resistant to the dominant individualism and conducive to ethical ecologies of interdependence has only begun to develop across multiple discourses. This essay contemplates the specific unfolding of a theory of nonlocal superpositions by physicists such as Stapp, Bohm and Barad. It does not literalize any God-trope, but rather entangles theology in the mysterious uncertainty of our widest interdependencies. This essay, first presented as a lecture at the American Academy of Religion “Science, Technology and Religion” Group, San Francisco, November 2011, forms the core of a chapter in a book I am currently completing, The Cloud of the Impossible: Theological Entanglements.

Logoi Pistoi, 2021

The following essay will examine the work of various theologians in the search for an appropriate synthesis of physics and theology. The essay will analyse their various perspectives, their methods, and their interpretation of Scripture in light of new developments in Quantum Mechanics and the quest to locate a conversation point where science and theology intersect. This article will provide an introduction to the history of the quanta, from the first tentative description in the 11th century, to the formal concept of Classical Physics in the 19th century and the discovery of Quantum Physics in the early 20th century. It will also address the concerns of Albert Einstein as relayed to two graduate students who were granted an audience with him in the early 1950s, and how these concerns are related in turn to epistemology as concerns human and trinitarian interactions; and how these interactions alter our conception of them as the disciplines of physics and theology converge.

If we are realists about the nature of God, if we believe that He is something greater than an idea conceived in the minds of men then He must be a part of the very nature of reality in which live. If Religion is to make sense and be taken seriously in this scientific age then our theories of the nature of God must cohere with the picture of reality provided to us by science. If God is a genuine feature of reality then it would seem that the task of theology is an ontological one –to establish the nature of a God that does really exist. Section A will set out the “orthodox” interpretation of quantum theory and examine how it might be understood as an epistemological claim. Section B will outline two key features of quantum reality that are taken to be ontological rather than epistemological feature: non-locality and causation. Finally in Section C, building on the framework established, I will bring quantum theory into discussion with theology. This final section is not aimed at providing proofs or definitive answers as to how we may understand God in a quantum world, instead my aim is to give voice to some key areas where I feel the conversation needs to be further developed either through engaging more fully with the epistemology/ontology debate or through a detailed exploration of the metaphysical implications of a particular interpretation of quantum theory.

Nine years ago, I was reading Wolfhart Pannenberg's Systematic Theology, when I came across a point that made a significant impression upon me. According to Pannenberg, it was easier to show the distinctions between the three persons of the Trinity than to show the unity of God. 1 From that point onward, I have paid attention to how theology might elucidate the unity of God, particularly in light of a quickly growing Islamic world that views God only in the exclusive terms of asserting God's oneness, tawhid. With an interest in showing the intelligibility of a Christian understanding of God's unity, and an interest in the language of science as a medium for interfaith conversation, I was captivated by our classroom discussion on quantum mechanics and specifically the issue of nonseparability or what has been termed: "quantum entanglement."

2015

We aim at an exercise of transdisciplinary approach between Science and religion, but also interdisciplinary between disciplines and theories which appeared in the second half of the 20 th century (e.g. topology, chaos theory, fractal geometry, non-linear dynamics, all of which can be found in the theory of complex systems) and which impose a reformulation of the theories of Quantum Mechanics starting with the beginning of the century, on the triangle substance-energy-information. We insist on the information which is vaguely defined and whose belonging to the wave-corpuscle duality is more stated than demonstrated. The interdisciplinary approach and the transdisciplinary one help us make this integration and bring arguments that information, along with energy and substance, build together our whole Universe.

Physics Today, 2006

Franklin is a false starting point, and the history of European politics during the 19th century is strewn with men of letters and science. As a historian, I do not find it gratifying to admit to readers of PHYSICS TODAY that my colleague's attempt to make sense of their science has fallen so short. Two more of Chaplin's blurbists, Dudley Herschbach, a Nobel laureate in chemistry, and Lawrence Krauss, a distinguished physicist, judge The First Scientific American to be admirable in concept and execution. The book is full of "verve, insight and wit," according to Herschbach, and, according to Krauss, offers, a "fascinating. .. comprehensive exploration of [Franklin's] scientific side." Herschbach and Krauss's uninformed tolerance is misplaced. The cracks between the cultures of science and history should not be safe havens for work that would not survive in either.