The Origin of the Universe and the Immortality of the Soul

Aristotle

The philosophical and scientific works of Aristotle were lost to Western Europe for centuries and were rediscovered through Arabic translations. Their rediscovery gave rise to a Western European philosophical movement, Scholasticism, with such prominent figures as Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Jean Buridan, Albert of Saxony, Nicholas Oresme, Gregory of Rimini, and many others.

I will recall here a curious debate that took place among the Scholastics between the 12th and 14th centuries, which may seem pointless to us today, but which was quite important in its time. For those who wish to learn all the details of the debate, I recommend Pierre Duhem's book, Le Système du Monde, volume VII.

The debate originated from the detection of an incompatibility between two statements due to Aristotle:

Pierre Duhem

1.      The actual existence of infinitely many distinct objects is impossible. There can be infinitely many objects potentially, like whole numbers, to which new elements can always be added, but we will never have infinitely many elements together at the same time.

2.      The world has always existed, has a finite size, and has always been the same.

These statements contradict the immortality of the soul because if the world has infinite duration and has always been the same (statement 2), there would be infinitely many individual souls separate from the body (actually, not potentially), which would contradict statement 1.

Solutions:

·         Aristotle did not attempt to resolve this because he did not consider the problem.

·         Stoics and Materialists: The human soul dies with the body. There are no souls without body.

·         Neoplatonists: Reincarnation; the number of souls is finite, even though time is infinite. They reincarnate once and again.

·         Averroes: After death, the human soul merges into a single intelligence, common to all humanity. There are not infinite souls, just one.

·         Avicenna: He denies that statement 1 applies to non-material beings that do not occupy space. Therefore, it would not apply to souls, which could exist simultaneously in infinite numbers.

·         Al-Ghazali: He denies assertion 2. The world has not lasted forever. Therefore, there are not infinite souls.

Thomas Aquinas

The last should have been the conclusion of the Scholastics, but they insisted on separating reason from faith and refused to use reason to reach the conclusion that the world may not have had infinite duration. Thomas Aquinas attempted to salvage Aristotle's third assertion when he said this:

1.      creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing) can be proven through reason.

2.      creatio originis, creation at an initial instant of time, i.e. that the duration of time is not infinite is a subject for faith, not reason. Since Aristotle lacked faith, he could not have reached this conclusion through reason alone, thus his authority is preserved.

I wonder what Thomas Aquinas would say had he known about the Big Bang theory, or the second law of thermodynamics, which suggest (though they do not prove) that the universe had a beginning. Therefore, the question of the origin of the universe would also be a matter of reason, not just faith, and the problem of the infinity of souls would not arise. But now few people try to preserve Aristotle’s authority.

It is curious that in Islam, which also believes that the universe was created at a specific moment and does not have infinite duration, there were thinkers like Averroes and Avicenna, who also attempted to uphold the authority of Aristotle although their religion makes them deny that the universe has had infinite duration, which solves the problem.

Nor would the problem arise in the case of neurophysiological dualism in the style of Eccles, since the soul would not exist separately from the body. This is compatible with Joseph Ratzinger’s view, described in his book Introduction to Christianity: that the “resurrection of the flesh” means the resurrection of the person, body and soul.

The same post in Spanish

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Manuel Alfonseca