William H Thorpe

Date:
1968
Reference:
PP/CRI/I/2/6/2
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: William H Thorpe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    III 'NATURE', THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL As we have already made clear, one of the great Humanist negations is the disbelief in the 'supernatural'. This implies, of course, 'a belief in the Natural'. We have already quoted a famous Humanist saying that he 'believes in Man' ; now we can say that he believes in 'Nature'. The urgent question arises, what do we mean by nature and the supernatural, and how does this differ from the belief of Christians in general and Friends in particular. Oman 34 gives a profound statement of the rationalistic way of thinking on this topic. I will try to summarize his four points briefly. Rationalism, according to Oman, does not ask the question which we are asking in this chapter, but imposes on the natural the conclusions of science and on the supernatural the conclusions of theology. In this way it reduces religion to intellectual doctrines about God and immortality, just as it reduces nature to a mechanical scheme of matter and motion. Secondly, it reduces all truth to that which can be proved by abstract reasoning, and thereby rules out, among other things, the very method which in this day and age seems to be at the basis both of the scientific and the artistic endeavour. Thirdly, the rationalistic attitude granted to man's mind nothing but the understanding and failed to realize how much is involved in making this more than the accidental equipment of a certain kind of animal. In doing this the Rationalists assumed a god like validity of our reasoning processes involving something 84 Oman (John) The Natural and the Supernatural. Cambridge: Univer sity Press, 1931. 32 QUAKERS AND HUMANISTS like Descartes' idea of a perfect being. Fourthly, Rationalism is by its very nature unable to develop the humility which ac knowledges that man is small and the universe is great, but assumes itself to be great by making the universe small. Oman suggests that perhaps the root of all these limitations was just this particular temper, in its way a kind of intellectual arro gance, which constituted a grave limitation for all higher in sight into both the natural and the supernatural. With regard to the scientific view of the natural world, it can, I think, be said (with Suzanne Langer 35 ) that the dominant principle ruling the minds of those who think scientifically about nature is the implicit but practical working hypothesis that all events are caused. 36 This rules the minds of most of us by inspiring what can be called our practical vision. But when we come down to trying to reach towards some basic philo sophy of science we find this apparently solid ground of nature dissolving beneath our feet. Indeed there seems to be wide agreement amongst modern physicists who write on philo sophical aspects of their subject, that causality, at least in the form that would provide for a completely deterministic view of the whole universe, is no longer tenable. 37 But although the idea of causation as the link uniting the whole of experience into a single universe is speculative in the extreme, there is nevertheless a strong tendency amongst theoretical physicists 35 Langer (S.) Philosophy in a New Key. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1951, pp. 277-80. 36 This is itself made the basis of an attack by Professor Miles on 'the category-division of things and events into natural and supernatural in contexts when the division implies . . that some events are due to natural and others to supernatural causes. (T. R. Miles: On Excluding the Supernatural. Religious Studies, 1, pp. 141-50, 1966.) 37 This is clearly outside the scope of our present subject ; those who are interested will find some of the sources for discussion of this topic in my book Science, Man and Morals. London: Methuen, 1956, pp. 5-8 and 134-5. 33