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PAOLO SOLERI: WHAT IF?, COLLECTED WRITINGS 1986-2000 |
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Paolo Soleri's What If?
Paolo Soleri is best known for his concept of "arcology," which most people think of in terms of its surface meaning: "architecture plus ecology," the design of carless, ecologically sustainable cities. Many people have seen Soleri's beautiful renderings of arcologies -- miniaturized three-dimensional habitats that require less ground area than conventional cities and can therefore utilize the surrounding land for farming, habitat preservation, and enjoyment by the city's inhabitants. Designed at various scales for different geographies and climates, Soleri's arcologies have taken on an almost mythic status; they are, for example, often explicitly referred to as part of the urban background in modern science-fiction writing about the future. Less well known is the fact that Soleri's architectural designs are only a small part of an overarching comprehensive philosophy he has developed. He has said that the ecologically sustainable aspects of his arcologies stand in relation to his overall theory of arcology as the plumbing of a house stands to a home: ecological sustainability is a necessary but not sufficient precursor to the well-being of the family that lives in the home. For Soleri, true long-term well-being can only be realized in a cosmic end-state he calls the "Omega Seed," and he sees arcologies as "instruments for the acceleration of the evolution of human culture" toward the achievement of this state. This was a profound idea for me, so I began reading everything I could find relating to it and talking about it with Paolo when I visited Arcosanti. During one of our talks, he asked me to write down some thoughts, placing his Omega Seed philosophy in the context of contemporary science. This was not a straightforward task for me, because my own scientific background is modest: I studied some undergraduate physics at Berkeley and did graduate work in nonlinear systems modeling at MIT, but have not been professionally involved in either field since then. However, I do have a fascination with modern science, especially with its implications for questions about the meaning and purpose of life. So with son1.e trepidation, I told Paolo I would do a first draft, and we scheduled a meeting to talk about it. It seemed obvious to me that Paolo actively kept up with developments in modern science, because his writing contained many references to scientific disciplines ranging from information theory to quantum physics, from astrophysics to modern cosmology. So I anticipated that he could help me fine-tune my initial thoughts and we could iterate collaboratively from there. I failed to remember that interacting with Paolo Soleri, whether in person or via his writings, is often an opportunity to have some of one's basic assumptions challenged. Thus it was when I talked with him about the first draft of this essay. In that meeting, Paolo told n1.ethat he had almost no understanding of contemporary science! He said that since coming to the United States nearly half a century ago he had been so absorbed in his work that he had almost stopped reading books. When I asked him about ideas in his writing that I thought were clearly related to modern physics and cosmology, he replied that his main sources for science news were Time magazine and an occasional Nova program on PBS. And he said that when he read the examples I outline in this essay, he barely understood what I was talking about, and certainly hadn't consciously drawn on these ideas in his writing. I found this startling. As I believe I've demonstrated below, Paolo's philosophical writings, especially those that deal with his MCD hypothesis and Omega Seed eschatology, have a profound coherence with contemporary scientific thinking, one that I believe most of us could only achieve via a deep familiarity with the details of the relevant disciplines. I could imagine only two explanations. Either Paolo was being overly modest, perhaps even disingenuous, about his level of scientific knowledge, or he somehow intuits this information tacitly. Having seen countless examples of Paolo's rigorous commitment to authenticity, I seriously doubted the first explanation. That left me with the second. I wondered if it were some mysterious attribute of creative genius that allows Paolo to somehow anticipate the deep contextual themes, what Buckminster Fuller called "the pattern integrity," of the modern scientific enterprise? [1] Perhaps he was accessing what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called the "noosphere," all. evolving quasi-cognitive layer surrounding the biosphere that Teilhard believed increasing numbers of people would be able to access? [2] Whatever the explanation, when it became clear that I couldn't count on any explicit scientific knowledge on Paolo's part to assist me in showing that his work is consistent with some of the deepest ideas in modern science, I turned instead to a remarkable book, The Physics of Immortality, written in 1993 by the respected astrophysicist and cosmologist Frank Tipler, a professor at Tulane University. It presents a compelling synthesis of religion and science that Science magazine called "a masterpiece conferring much-craved scientific respectability on what we have always wanted to believe in." [3] Reading Tipler's book has brought me to a new level of appreciation of Paolo's philosophy. I've been amazed by the coherence of his thinking with Tipler's scientific cosmology, especially given that Paolo had already developed and written about most of these ideas several years before the publication of Tipler's book. The Two Cultures Before getting into the details of Paolo's thinking, I'd like to digress briefly to another subject that Tipler addresses in his book: the deep divide between the world views of the literary and scientific wings of the contemporary intellectual community. C.P. Snow pointed out that this fundamental split has shaped much of our modern and postmodern worlds. [4] Tipler focuses on a particular aspect of this split: the divergent philosophical stance of literary intellectuals and scientists toward the idea of "progress." Paolo's ideas are radically "progressive" in that he claims there is a real possibility, however small, that life in our universe can achieve the ultimate long-term progress of the "Omega Seed." The Omega Seed is free from the suffering imposed by the physical constraints of the material universe. Paolo says it this way: "Being (Omega Seed) would be life (Becoming) transcended into knowing, total self-knowing of a reality that has consumed life." Paolo summarizes this philosophy in his own remarkable book The Omega Seed: All Eschatological Hypothesis. [5] Although these words evoke traditional religious ideas, Paolo presents his thinking as a scientific hypothesis open to the rules of testing and falsifiability that the Oxford historian of science Karl Popper says distinguish the scientific method from philosophical speculation. Tipler also takes this approach in his book, and says that most modern scientists also have the progressivist belief that the steady advances in knowledge ferreted out by the scientific ntethod can support a long-term increase in humanity's quality of life. But Tipler points out that many of the literary intellectuals who guard the gates of modern mass media and culture refuse to take seriously any philosophical claims that assert the real possibility of long-term progress. Tipler traces the roots of these anti-progress belief systems. He says it started with an ancient concept called the "Eternal Return." The Theory of the Eternal Return The idea of the Eternal Return arose when early philosophers first began contemplating the concept of eternity. They deduced that because every process in physical reality consists of a finite number of components, it would have to periodically return to the state it had started from and then perfectly repeat its past behaviors. There seemed to be no way around this problem, for no matter how complex the process, when compared against the vastness of eternity, it would eventually use up all possibility for novelty. Two of the most influential modern philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, fully accepted the reasoning behind the Eternal Return. Nietzsche spent years studying the physics of his time so he could understand its mathematical underpinnings and finally agreed that its logic was incontrovertible. He concluded that any possible culture or civilization would be destined to forever return to where it had started, and therefore long-term progress was inherently impossible. In the long run, there could be "nothing new under the sun." Heidegger built on Nietzsche's conclusions in developing his philosophy. He was a member of the German Nazi party, and based partly on his influence, it adopted the ancient Anglo-Saxon icon of the Eternal Return as its symbol, then called "fylfot." The modern translation of this word is "swastika." Nihilism Based on their reasoning about the Eternal Return, Nietzsche and Heidegger developed what they called "nihilism," which is one of the main philosophical foundation stones of modernity. Some of nihilism's axioms are:
Obviously, nihilism is the polar opposite of ideas that posit any possibility of long-term progress. As mentioned above, Tipler believes it is largely an acceptance of nihilism, perhaps often tacit and unacknowledged, that has caused many modernist literary intellectuals to harbor a deep suspicion, even cynicism, toward the progressive assumptions of science and technology. If they feel this way toward science, these attitudes certainly extend toward progressive philosophies such as Paolo's Omega Seed eschatology. Perhaps this is why his ideas haven't yet been widely disseminated beyond a core of specialists. But Tipler feels that all this may be due for a change, ironically because of some "progressive" revolutionary developments in computer science and information theory. Infinite-State Turing Machines It started when Alan Turing, the polymath who led Britain's military encryption effort, developed a rigorous mathematical theory that was to have startling implications for the various philosophies based on the Eternal Return. Turing distinguished two fundamentally different types of machines: finite state and infinite state machines. A finite state machine has a fundamental characteristic: the number of different states available to it is inherently finite. Most computer scientists believe that human beings are finite state machines, given the limited information processing capacity of our brains. Finite state machines have been mathematically shown to be fundamentally limited. Information theorists have proven that "any finite state machine, in the absence of an external stimulus, will eventually enter a state after which it will repeat endlessly a perfectly periodic sequence of states." This "perfectly periodic sequence of states" is the mathematical equivalent of the Eternal Return. So all finite state systems are in fact inherently limited; they can never achieve ongoing long-term progress. Round one goes to nihilism. But here's where it gets interesting. Turing also showed that another class of computing machines exists, which he called infinite state machines. And he constructed a mathematical proof that clearly demonstrated that infinite state machines are not limited by the Eternal Return. In honor of his discovery, infinite state machines are now called "Turing machines." They have a number of other remarkable characteristics, such as the ability to perfectly simulate (called "emulation") any possible finite state machine, including other Turing machines. And there is a special class of Turing machines called "universal Turing machines," which, in addition to the capabilities shared by all Turing machines, can also perfectly simulate themselves. As we'll see below, the scientific basis of Paolo's Omega Seed eschatology depends fundamentally on the capabilities of the universal Turing machine. Turing's work has the revolutionary implication that the idea if long-term progress has now become philosophically tenable. In one stroke, these advances in computer science have overturned the philosophical basis of nihilism. Ironically, the possible existence of infinite state machines was literally unthinkable until the progressive development of science and technology resulted in the invention of the modern digital computer. The Science and Sensibility of Soleri's Eschatology Building on the above background, I'll now attempt to demonstrate some of the coherence with modern science implicit in the following small sample of Paolo Soleri's writing. In the first three paragraphs he addresses two of his core metaphysical concepts [6]: MCD (Miniaturization, Complexification, and Duration) and his Omega Seed eschatology. In the fourth paragraph, Paolo critiques animism and the theologies it has spawned.
Phrase #1. The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
With this interesting and somehow poignant opening phrase, Paolo's words are evocative of the "Many-Worlds Interpretation" of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics (QM). MWI was first proposed in 1957 as an alternative to the then generally accepted "Copenhagen Interpretation," which said that quantum randomness is intrinsic throughout reality, including the macro reality of the entire universe. MWI instead posited that quantum randomness is merely an artifact of our limited way of observing the physical world. According to the Copenhagen Interpretation, the wave function of that paradoxical cat in Schrodinger's famous thought experiment is somehow "reduced" when the experimenter opens the cage, so half the time we will find a dead cat and half the time we will get clawed by a very alive and angry cat. Which it will be is intrinsically random. This seems to nuke some sense. But the more recent MWI interpretation of quantum mechanics says something radically new. The Many-Worlds Interpretation claims there is no reduction of the Schrodinger wave function at all. It insists that the radioactive decay of the atom that triggers the poison gas forces the cat, and all the other pieces of equipment in the experiment, including the experimenters themselves, to split into two different worlds, each ontologically real. So two different worlds of experimenters open the door, and in one world the cat is alive, and in the other the cat is dead! Both worlds continue to exist, each unaware of the other. The key premise here is that the universe at all scales behaves according to the equations of quantum mechanics, and indeed there is nothing in the math of QM that requires it to operate only at the tiny subatomic scale to which it is normally applied. If QM in fact works at all scales, then its mathematics strongly implies a Many-Worlds Interpretation. This implies that there are many branching parallel universes, and we happen to live in one of them, one whose basic fundamental parameters can support our form of life. This idea is sometimes called the "Anthropic Cosmological Principle," and Frank Tipler is one of its leading scientific proponents. A majority of quantum field theorists now believe that MWI is correct, including luminaries such as Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, Murray Gell-Mann, and Steven Weinberg. David Deutsch, a leading theoretical physicist at Oxford, has recently extended the mathematics of MWI to found the new field of quantum computing. Deutsch believes that the recent successful prototyping of simple quantum computers empirically proves that parallel worlds really do exist! This is an example of how Paolo's poetic phrases such as "in the universe we belong" can contain profound levels of implicit scientific meaning. I've discussed this with Paolo and he says that he definitely wasn't thinking of MWI when he wrote these words. Phrase #2. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity
Paolo's phrasing here is evocative of Einstein's general theory of relativity. In physical theories prior to General Relativity, it was assumed that the particles and fields described by physics evolved within an unchanging background spacetime. This background spacetime existed whether or not there were any physical entities, and was not influenced in any way by any physical entities that happened to be in it. However, one of the revolutionary breakthroughs Einstein made in General Relativity was to utterly eliminate the requirement for an eternally existing spacetime. Instead, spacetime is itself generated by the initial data and the evolution of the Einstein field equations. In General Relativity spacetime is represented as a "four-dimensional manifold." (A manifold is anything that locally resembles our familiar Euclidean flat three-dimensional space, though its overall shape may be anything but flat.) It is the local topology of this manifold that gives rise to the behavior we call gravity; think of Carl Sagan's famous demo in his Cosmos TV series in which he places spheres of various weights onto a stretched rubber sheet inscribed with a Euclidean grid. The spheres sink into the sheet, distorting its topology, and the paths of objects or light near each sphere are a function of the local spacetime displacement. Paolo's term "mass-energy" is of course evocative of Einstein's famous equation, E = MC2 , and refers to the material objects and energies of our universe. Thus Paolo's phrase "Space-time is the agent manipulating the media, mass-energy" is a wonderfully poetic statement of a core principle of modern physics. Phrase #3. Teilhard de Chardin's Omega Point Theory
Paolo posits a triad of processes that drives evolution toward what he calls the Omega Seed, the cosmic Mind at the end of time. He calls this triad "MCD," short for "Miniaturization, Complexification, and Duration." Its terms are synergistic: that is, the behavior of the whole MCD triad is unpredictable from any analysis of its separate parts because of their nonlinear interactions. Paolo credits the Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin as inspiration for the first two terms of this triad, "M" and "C." Trained as a paleontologist, Teilhard noted the increasing complexity of the fossils he studied, where single-cell organisms evolved into metazoans, some phyla in turn developed complex nervous systems, and finally Homo sapiens acquired intelligence. In his best-known book, The Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard said that this increasing complexification can only arise in a finite and bounded geometry like the surface of the Earth, because "only in such environments is mankind forced to coalesce into the Omega Point." [8] Teilhard calls this process "compression." Paolo has evolved this idea to another level with his concept of "Miniaturization," which goes beyond the mere increase in density implied by the term "compression." By Miniaturization, Paolo implies a process of increasing complexity in ever smaller spaces, whose ultimate outcome is the integration of all possibilities, from all parallel universes in the entire history of the cosmos into a tiny volume at the Big Crunch. It is important to note that Paolo's use of the term "complexification" is not synonymous with mere complication. Instead he uses the term to refer to that mysterious edge between chaos and order that many system theorists believe is where novelty emerges. "Complexity Theory" is rapidly evolving into a fruitful scientific discipline spearheaded by high-powered research institutes such as the Santa Fe Institute for Complexity Studies. Physics Nobelist Murray Cell-Mann, one of SFI's founders, invited Paolo to give a presentation there a few years ago, which was attended by a record number of complexity researchers. Phrase #4. The Hyper-Computer at the Omega Point
Paolo's concept of Duration is also coherent with some of the most recent thinking in modern cosmology. Tipler summarizes this thinking in The Physics of Immortality. Tipler's thesis is that life in this universe will eventually develop cosmic-scale engineering that will allow it to build a "hyper-computer" capable of surviving at the Big Crunch of the universe during the final moments of its recollapse phase. Crediting Teilhard, Tipler calls this the "Omega Point Theory." Life will upload itself into this hyper-computer and will henceforth live as emulated virtual entities inside the virtual worlds generated by it. By steering the dynamics of the Big Crunch in certain precise ways, these entities will be able to run the hyper-computer at continuously increasing processing speeds. Because their perception of time will be a function of these processing speeds, they will be able to achieve subjective immortality as long as they are able to increase their processing speed faster than the collapse rate of the universe. Phrase #5. The Indistinguishability Theorem
Tipler believes that once they have ensured their own immortality one of the first projects of these godlike entities will be to find a way to perfectly emulate all the beings who have lived in the entire history of the universe, thus achieving for those beings "resurrection into eternal life." In spite of its religious references, Tipler claims that this is a rigorously scientific hypothesis grounded in the latest advances in mathematics, physics, cosmology, and information theory. Emulation is a term from information theory that implies a perfect simulation, one that meets the requirements of the Indistinguishability Theorem. Basically this says that if a perfect copy can be made that is indistinguishable from the original by any conceivable test, then it is the same thing. So if a sufficiently powerful computer can simulate a person to the point of emulation, the emulation is the same as the original person! Tipler calculates that the processing power of the vast hyper-computer at the Omega Point will be easily sufficient to emulate every person who has ever lived in all possible parallel universes, along with the total circumstances of their cultural and social context. It is in this sense that Tipler is using the term "resurrection." It is important to note that the only type of device capable of accomplishing this amazing feat is the universal Turing machine referred to above. It is Turing's virtuoso mathematical proof that allows this, and only this, type of device to defeat the Eternal Return and open the possibility of unlimited progress. Paolo's ideas are fully coherent with Tipler's. Thus there is substantial scientific grounding for Paolo's evocative phrase "the full recollection of the past is resurrection ... total revelation of the past to itself." Phrase #6. David Deutsch's "Fabric of Reality"
The Oxford theoretical physicist David Deutsch, whom I referred to above, examines Tipler's Omega Point Theory in his acclaimed book The Fabric if Reality: The Science if Parallel Universes -- and Its Implications. [9] Deutsch begins with the assertion that when we inquire into profound questions such as the ultimate fate of life in the universe, philosophical argument alone is insufficient: we must also take our deepest scientific theories seriously. So Deutsch examines the implications of weaving together the four deepest theories so far constructed by humanity: quantum mechanics, our deepest theory of physical reality; updated Darwinian-Dawkins evolution, our deepest theory of progressive change in living organisms; Karl Popper's work on the scientific method, our deepest epistemological theory (how we acquire knowledge); and Alan Turing's theory of universal computation, our deepest theory of information processing. Deutsch points out that these four theories have withstood years of the most rigorous tests the scientific method can apply to them. However, because of the extreme specialization required to become trained in anyone of these fields, there are very few people who deeply understand more than one or two of them. Deutsch is a rare exception. His interdisciplinary brilliance has allowed him to master the arcane mathematics of all four theories and weave them together as an interactive "fabric of reality." His conclusion is that Tipler's analysis is essentially correct -- our universe is indeed evolving into a computationally based Omega Point populated by a virtual community of Godlike intelligences. He puts it this way: "It seems to me that at the current state of our scientific knowledge, this is the 'natural' view to hold. It is the conservative view, the one that does not propose any startling change in our best fundamental explanations. Therefore it ought to be the prevailing view, the one against which proposed innovations are judged. That is the role I am advocating for it. I am not hoping to create a new orthodoxy; far from it. As I have said, I think it is time to move on. But we can move to better theories only if we take our best existing theories seriously, as explanations of the world." [10] However, Deutsch differs with Tipler's assertion that this community of Omega Beings will necessarily resurrect all the other beings who have ever lived, on the grounds that there is no way we can possibly anticipate their values and priorities. Phrase #7. The Omega Point Theory of Eschatological Cosmology
In this segment, Paolo's ideas are consistent with both Teilhard's and Tipler's ideas. As pointed out above, Teilhard believed that the Earth's next level of what he called "planetization" will be a "noosphere," or cognitive layer. Teilhard believed that in the far future the noosphere will at last become independent of the physical universe and will coalesce into a "supersapient being," the Omega Point. Paolo's Omega Seed idea is a similar but much more comprehensive concept, because it includes the entire cosmos and is fully consistent with the computational cosmology developed by Tipler. According to the "Big Bang" theory, our universe originated in a titanic explosion from a point called a "singularity." Since then, it has been expanding outward for an estimated 10 to 15 billion years to its present state. By assuming a constraint he calls "the Omega Point Boundary Condition," Tipler shows mathematically that the universe will eventually begin collapsing back into another singularity, which he calls the Omega Point. This recollapse is popularly known as the "Big Crunch." It's important to note that Tipler believes that the Big Crunch will still occur, in spite of recent astronomical evidence that a cosmic-scale repulsive force is accelerating the expansion rate of some parts of the cosmos. [11] Tipler draws on the work of Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins to reach a working definition of life as "information preserved by natural selection." He posits that "the essential nature -- at the physics level -- of all human activities can be shown to be information processing." He concludes that "life goes on forever if machines of some sort can continue to exist forever. The pattern is what is important, not the substrate." He then uses the work of John von Neumann in information theory to show that the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics "permit an infinite amount of information processing in the future, provided there is sufficient available energy at all future times." Tipler claims that human beings are simply complicated biological machines that the laws of physics will eventually be able to fully describe. If this is so, each unique human being can be thought of as a specific computer program being run on a biocomputer we call the brain. If life in the universe can build a sufficiently powerful computer by the time of the Big Crunch, then the beings alive at that time could upload themselves into that computer and enjoy immortality as a set of virtual personas inhabiting infinitely evolving virtual worlds. Again, only the special class of computer referred to above as a universal Turing machine has the capability to accomplish this task. After the Omega Seed has resurrected via emulation all the entities and their total contexts who have existed in the prior history of the universe, it will have achieved the hyper-miniaturization that Paolo describes as "the ultimate encapsulation of all the information-learning generated by the evolutionary development." In a sense, it is the purpose of life in the universe to accomplish all this during the time left to it before the Big Crunch. According to Tipler's Omega Point Boundary Condition, intelligent life not only has the potential to do this, but will in fact do so. [12] Paolo, on the other hand, believes that the achievement of the Omega Seed is only one outcome among many different possible futures for our universe. Nevertheless, he asserts that if it is even possible at all, sufficiently advanced intelligent species will do all they can to achieve it. And if they succeed, the Omega Seed possibility is so magnificent, literally the achievement of eternal bliss for all beings who have ever lived in the history of the universe, that the Omega Beings, if they do come to exist, will be ethically compelled to resurrect all the beings from the past. Why? Because Paolo believes that these advanced beings will understand that until they do so they will not have achieved full equity. He calls this the "onion skin problem," referring to the successive generations of intelligent beings whose eons of effort and suffering have allowed the final layer of Omega Beings to achieve their transcendence into self-revelation. Paolo uses the term "desirability" for the core ethical principle that will motivate the Omega Beings to do whatever is necessary to achieve full equity through both space and time. I hope he's right! Phrase #8. I Will Be What I Will Be
Paolo is horrified by the inequity and suffering he sees in the world, not only man's inhumanity to man, but also on the level of the cosmos. I experienced a similar feeling a few years ago while viewing a Hubble telescope image of two distant galaxies colliding. The caption explained that the immense gravitational tidal forces associated with the collision would rip to shreds the nearby stars (and any planets circling them) in both galaxies. I found myself imagining a super-advanced scientific civilization in one (or both!) of those galaxies that had evolved through perhaps millions of years to finally achieve a state of peace, plenty, and equity across the myriad of planets in their home galaxy. And I imagined the feelings of the members of that vast culture as their scientists informed them that all they had worked and struggled for was inevitably going to be reduced to cosmic dust by the approaching titanic collision. As I contemplated the otherwise beautiful Hubble image, I realized that the forces of nature themselves seem to be mocking the best efforts of life to at last be free from the suffering inherent in physicality. What had that advanced civilization (or we ourselves) really achieved that was all that different from primitive animals cowering in terror before more prosaic planet-bound natural disasters? Paolo has concluded that it would be a malicious God indeed who would condemn His creatures to such eternally Sisyphean suffering. For Paolo the inequity he sees in the physical universe is a major reason to reject the present existence of God. He instead blames animistic theologies for much of the historical evil perpetrated by man upon his fellow man. He reasons that when we accept the idea of the present existence of a God, then some humans inevitably will claim privileged access to that God, thereby elevating their merely human prejudices to the status of Divine inspiration. From this follows the sordid history of authoritarian theologies led by human despots who commit horrifying evil in the name of their Gods. But in rejecting the existence of God as present reality, Paolo does not succumb to the nihilism referred to earlier, whose philosophical roots lie in the philosophy of the Eternal Return. Instead, Paolo builds his philosophy upon the premise that life in the universe has the possibility of evolving to become Godlike itself, as he puts it, "Not God at the beginning but God at the end." So Paolo's is an eschatological God, whose future existence depends on the stupendous cosmic-level science and technologies required to call it into being. And his is also a contingent God, whose manifestation ultimately depends on the will and commitment of countless generations of future beings throughout the cosmos to do whatever it takes to achieve the Omega Seed near the end of time. Tipler points out that some major theologians have also posited a God whose primary mode of being is in the future, such as the German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg, who has said:
Interestingly, some biblical scholars have also argued that this view of God as primarily a future being was present in the earliest texts of ancient Judaism. They point out a significant translation error in the core dialogue between Moses and God in Exodus 3:14. When Moses asks God for His name, God is said to have replied out of the burning bush, "I AM THAT I AM .... say unto the children of Israel that I AM hath sent me [Moses] unto you." But God's reply in the original Hebrew text was "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh," which Pannenberg and others say is more properly translated as: "I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE .... Tell the children of Israel that I WILL BE sent me to you." Tipler points out that both the Jewish German philosopher Ernst Bloch and the Catholic German theologian Hans Kung agree with this future tense translation, and that both emphasize that the God of Moses is therefore an "End- and Omega-God." Kaddish During the four years that I've been working with Paolo, I've often asked myself why I'm so attracted to his work. It began to come together for me recently at UCLA's Royce Hall as my wife and I listened to a performance of Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 3, "Kaddish." Bernstein described Kaddish as an embodiment of "the struggle that is born of the crisis of our century, a crisis of faith." In its original use in ancient Aramaic, Kaddish meant "sanctification." In the Jewish tradition, it has evolved into a prayer consisting of praise and glorification of God, plus expression of hope for the establishment of God's kingdom on earth. Kaddish is recited at the conclusion of each principal section of every Jewish service as a reaffirmation of life and a call for peace. At the same time, it has also become included as a mourner's recitation in traditional Jewish funeral services -- and is thus sometime called "the Jewish requiem." Bernstein's Symphony No. 3 personifies this in a Speaker who, horrified by Man's inhumanity to man, experiences a deep crisis of Faith. He screams his outrage at a Creator God who would allow such evil to exist, and accuses Him of a breach of faith with man. In despair, he implores God to give him a reason to go on living in such an inequitable world. Finally, exhausted from his struggle, the Speaker falls asleep and dreams that he and God have become partners in creating an ideal Heaven on Earth. Upon awakening the next morning, the Speaker is at first dismayed to discover that alas, it was only a dream, as he now finds himself back in the real world from which he yearns deliverance. Suddenly the Speaker experiences a profound flash of insight. He realizes that the only way he can heal the separation he has created between himself and God is by accepting himself as a divine agent with the moment-by-moment choice to create or destroy. The orchestral music and the voices of the 100-person choir combine in a rising crescendo toward catharsis as the Speaker, overcome with awe and love, proclaims his revelation:
As the orchestra, soprano soloist, and choir joined together in a dramatic fugue that built toward a joyous "Amen," r experienced a deeply moving inner resolution arising from the double meaning of the Kaddish ritual. It was a requiem for the letting go of both our outmoded paternalistic relationship with an authoritarian God and our nihilistic postmodern rejection of scientific progress. Our ambivalence results in an adolescent co-dependency in which we tend to alternate between subservient worship and rebellious rejection. And it was also a joyous celebration of a more mature new Divine partnership, in which we accept and then embrace humanity's responsibility to bring the sacred into manifestation. I realized at that moment that a major reason for my attraction to Paolo's work is that he also is searching for answers to deep questions like those raised by Kaddish. Like the Speaker in Kaddish, Paolo Soleri is horrified by the inequity and suffering he sees in the world, not only in man's inhumanity to man, but also on the level of the cosmos. Unlike the Speaker, Paolo does not blame God. Instead he rejects the idea that any God worthy of the name would allow the horrific suffering evident on Earth and in the cosmos. Once having done so, Paolo realizes that there are only two philosophical choices:
Paolo has chosen the latter and dedicated his life to manifesting it. It is a magnificent and inspiring stand, and I respect, honor, and appreciate him for it. -- Ron Anastasia Cosanti Foundation, June 2001 _______________ Notes: 1. R. Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981). 2. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969) (first published as L'Avenir de L'Homme by Editions du SeuiJ in 1959). 3. Frank J. Tipler, 1995, The Physics of Immortality (New York: Anchor Books, 1995) (originally published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1994.) 4. C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1961). 5. Paolo Soleri, The Omega Seed: All Eschatological Hypothesis (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981). 6. Ibid. Reality, the dance of space, is all "physical." 7. Ibid. 8. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper and Row, 1975). 9. David Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes -- and Its Implications (New York: Penguin Press, 1997). 10. Ibid., p. 366. 11. In a personal correspondence with the editor of Skeptic magazine, Tipler challenges the recent astronomical observations that seem to imply that the expansion of our universe is speeding up, perhaps under the influence of a cosmic-scale repulsive force similar to an idea that Einstein called the "cosmological constant." Here's an excerpt from Tipler's comments:
12. Frank J. Tipler, "From 2100 to the End of Time" (www.math.tulane.edu/ ~tipler/wired.html).
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