Toward a Participatory Theory of Knowledge and Reality

Discussion

Matthew Segall:

"One of the biggest hurdles to developing a truly participatory view of the cosmos is the ideal of observer-independence, a Cartesian legacy that strictly separates mind and matter. If one tries to do science from an imagined vantage point “outside” the universe, one forgets that such a standpoint is impossible. We are part of what we study. As William James put it in A Pluralistic Universe, “Philosophies are intimate parts of the universe, expressing something of its own thought of itself. Our philosophies swell the current of being and add their character to it.” In other words, thinking is not a mental representation but the universe’s own reflective activity, a intimate expression and intensification of cosmic process.

Historically, one can trace these issues back to the theology that gave birth to modern science in the seventeenth century—namely, Deism. Pioneers like Descartes, Kepler, and Newton believed in a divinely designed universe. Mechanistic laws offered proof of God the designer; hence the universe’s intelligibility seemed guaranteed by divine fiat. Over time, however, science grew more instrumental. Increasingly, it pursued know-how over understanding, prioritizing technological manipulation of nature over metaphysical insight. As a result, by the nineteenth century, the human mind effectively replaced God as the ground of intelligibility. Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy exemplifies this shift: he concluded that space, time, and causality are functions of the mind rather than eternal forms structuring the cosmos. No longer did one need a divine designer to account for the world’s intelligibility—only the transcendental categories of human reason.

Yet a participatory theology would differ significantly from Deism. Teilhard suggests (and Schelling, Steiner, Owen Barfield, and others echo the idea) that the universe is an ongoing incarnation, the gradual embodiment of the divine in and through evolving materiality. This is far removed from a God who creates a mechanistic universe from nothing and remains outside it. The idea of cosmogenesis as divine embodiment implies that God is continually involved in creation, making participation ontologically real—both for nature and for us as its centers of self-reflection."

(https://footnotes2plato.substack.com/p/science-and-religion-in-a-participatory)