Q&A: A Physical Translation of Maimonides
A Physical Translation of Maimonides
Question
Maimonides wrote: “This Being is the God of the world, the Lord of all the earth, and He governs the sphere with a power that has no end or limit, with a power that never ceases; for the sphere revolves continually, and it is impossible for it to revolve without one who causes it to revolve, and He, blessed be He, is the One who causes it to revolve without hand and without body” (Chapter 1 of Foundations of the Torah, halakha 5).
I wanted to know whether there is a modern translation of this proof in the language of today’s physics.
Answer
Hello,
It is not clear why you need a translation. What exactly is the problem with this text in your view? Is it that there are no spheres? Is it that there is inertia, so the continuation of motion is not miraculous and does not raise any difficulty? These are two different questions.
Before answering both, I should add that even if there is some difficulty here, there is no reason at all to expect that it would have a translation. This is a statement based on ancient conceptions, and there is no necessity to assume that it should still be correct today. It could simply be a mistake, and that would be that.
And nevertheless, in my opinion there is such a translation.
As for the first difficulty—that there are no spheres—that does not really matter. It is only language. The regular motion of the planets (including our own) raises the same difficulty and the same line of reasoning, even without speaking about spheres. It is just a change of terminology.
As for the second difficulty, I myself asked this question during the Simchat Torah hakafot at the yeshiva in Yeruham, when the head of the yeshiva there spoke about this midrash (which underlies Maimonides’ words), and I remarked to him that the fact that the sphere keeps rotating is a direct result of Newton’s first law (that if no force acts on a body, it continues moving at constant speed in a straight line), and therefore there is nothing remarkable about it, and in any case no proof here of the existence of God.
He answered me that Newton’s first law itself is the work of the Holy One, blessed be He. The fact that there is a law is not an explanation but a description. The question of why and how this happens still remains.
And if we expand this further: the fact that the laws of nature operate in their regular and constant way all the time points to the existence of a directing hand that enacted them and operates them continuously. If there is no such hand, then we have here a phenomenon without a cause, which contradicts the principle of causality (that everything must have a cause).