On 'Earth and Heaven' and what is between them – On Earth and Heaven

With God’s help

On 'Earth and Heaven' and what is between them (Review of Daniel Shalit's book, 'Earth and Heaven: Book One – Chapters on Nature, Natural Sciences and the Human Figure', Thuay Publishing, 2009)

Introduction and apology

I first met my friend Daniel Shalit on a fascinating Shabbat about ten years ago, when he was a guest at the Hesder Yeshiva in Yeruham, and he dealt with music and its meaning, but also with more general questions concerning Western culture. I had heard his voice before, following his instructive series of articles on these subjects that appeared in Nukuda. I don't know if he remembers this, but following our first conversation, on Shabbat night, I asked him why he tends to focus on the existential meaning of ideas and the connections between them, as well as on various reductions and implications of these ideas (what they express), and does not attack them directly with arguments and philosophical and analytical tools? He answered me that I was right, but in his opinion, in most cases, the public he speaks to and writes to is not ready for discussion on these levels. The tendency toward existentialism that characterizes the culture in which we live (which perhaps stems from despair of reason) dictates the framework and manner of discussion.

In my articles and books, almost all of which were written after that meeting, the approach is different, perhaps because of my analytical (and anti-existentialist) philosophical tendencies. Now, from the perspective of a few years, and also a few books and articles, I understand better that there is some truth in what he told me then. The reader, and Daniel himself, will forgive me for the fact that beyond a general overview of this instructive and fascinating book, which will be brief due to the limitations of the system, I take advantage of this limited stage to return to that main point again.

On reductionism and 'skipping'

Daniel Shalit, as usual, uses in this book a broad knowledge of philosophy, science (mainly biology and physics), culture, art, literature, and Hasidic and occult literature. The main point of the book is the position of two alternatives, facing each other: scientific reductionism, versus a Jewish, Hasidic perspective (mainly Chabad, and also Rabbi Hillel of Paritch), which also contains inherent paradoxes. In his words: a perspective of a point (static) versus a perspective of a line (dynamic).

Scientific reductionism attempts to place all the planes of reality and the science that describes it, one on top of the other. Roughly speaking, it can be said that the reductionist approach places history and sociology on psychology, and that on physiology, and that on biology, and that on chemistry, and all of them together stand on physics. This approach perceives reality as mere matter, which can undergo processes of composition and generalization, which create different areas of discussion, which sometimes also require different tools. But this is always a change in the tools, not in the essences being studied. In principle, everything can be placed on physics. Of course, not every scientist advocates such a view, but there are quite a few of them, and what is more important, when science becomes a worldview, and not just one tool among several for understanding reality, then a reductionist picture inevitably emerges.

The bulk of the book is devoted to describing the leaps that exist in the reductionist picture (on p. 237 he provides a map of all the leaps discussed in the book, ten in number). A leap is a gap between two domains that border each other, which suggests that the reduction between the two is problematic. For example, in the transition from the inanimate to the plant, the organism appears, which cannot be placed on the physics and chemistry of the inanimate. From the plant to the living, the phenomenon of life appears. From the living to the desert, consciousness and awareness appear. The fifth degree of the Khazari will probably be discussed in the following sections.

Shalit is well aware that at least some of these leaps find a scientific-reductionist explanation (not all. For example, contrary to the myth prevalent among various animal scientists, including professionals, there is no known explanation for the emergence of our emotions, judgments, thinking, will, and in general our various experiences as humans, from biochemical or physiological complexes). But he claims that even where they exist, scientific explanations are still insufficient, since our feeling as humans, our perception from our perspective, sees that there is a leap here.

On page 115 he presents a miraculous phenomenon of a single-celled aquatic creature that discovers a food crumb and approaches it by pushing its flagellum. To the ordinary eye, this seems like a purposeful action, which is not appropriate for such an inferior creature, and it is certainly fundamentally different from plants or inanimate objects, but biology explains that this crumb changes the chemical composition of the water, and these affect receptors located on the cell's rim that respond by secreting substances, which move the flagellum, in a 'propeller' motion in the direction of the food crumb (Had Gadya). Is this a satisfactory explanation? From a scientific perspective, it is certainly possible, but Shalit claims that our amazement still requires an explanation that relates to something beyond biology. Although it is unlikely that the single-celled creature itself sets goals for itself and acts according to them (a common mistake among teleology deniers), it clearly seems that there is someone else here who sets them before it and causes it to act in this way by these bio-chemo-mechanical means. Shalit seems to agree that vitalism (= belief in the existence of another, spiritual substance, beyond the material one) is no longer necessary in the scientific sense to understand biology, but something similar is still necessary, in another sense (see my note below).

And so he writes on page 123:

From the perspective of molecular biology, any distinction between plants and animals is eliminated, and the division between botany and zoology is mentioned only as an ancient legacy, perhaps an unfortunate historical accident, which could only have happened due to ignorance of the mechanisms of heredity, which are identical in plants and animals. But since we are here, we are no longer ashamed of what the human eye sees, that is, in plants and animals as the visible peaks of two distinct developmental structures…

Shalit claims that a reductionist explanation does not provide an answer to this feeling of 'learned wonder' (=wonder that stems from more comprehensive information, and not from the lack of information. A motto that already appears on the back flap).

The book is instructive, written clearly and carefully, despite the need for scientific detail (sometimes too detailed for my taste), and in accordance with Shalit's aforementioned policy, it does indeed meet the expectations of the educated reader, even if he is not a professional in the various fields of science discussed in it. It makes a very interesting synthesis between several fields, and presents a broad and comprehensive picture, as far as is possible in such a framework, of the current scientific structure (the book has also been reviewed by scientists in the various fields, and some of their comments are incorporated into it), and of its meanings.

A side note

This is the place to return to the starting point of this review. I really miss the distinction in the book between the scientific and the philosophical levels. It is not always clear where the 'skipping' in question is a problem on the scientific level, that is, where the scientific theory is (still?) inadequate at this point, and where the skipping constitutes a problem only on the philosophical level. This distinction is not always easy to make, but in my opinion it is acute for such a discussion, and I will explain why.

It seems unreasonable to me to demand that science include God (or even a soul, and spirituality in general) in its explanations. Laplace argued that he did not need this hypothesis, and he was right. God is not intended to solve problems that science cannot explain. In the past, there were more scientific problems, and today they have been solved. So perhaps the current problems are also just temporary absences, and it is wrong to draw conclusions from them? On the other hand, if God is really not a solution to scientific problems, then why is it important to point to these gaps as the basis for the theistic argument? Assuming that science will eventually fill in all these gaps, then the existence of God should be necessary on a completely different level. Even after we understand the complexity in its entirety, and we have perfect laws to describe it, we can still ask, like Abraham, "Who created these?"

It is true that it is important to undermine the atheistic argument (this version of Dawkins's, in his book Is There a God?), which 'proves' from the existence of a scientific explanation and from the lack of need for an assumption about a transcendent being, the non-existence of such a being. This argument is just as problematic as the arguments that prove the existence of such a being from scientific lacunae. Such arguments err by weaving God into the scientific causal chain. To the extent that lacunae in science cannot prove the existence of God, scientific knowledge cannot disprove it. The existence or non-existence of God must be discussed on a philosophical level. For the sake of discussion, let us assume for a moment that science will arrive at a perfect reductionist explanation of all areas of knowledge, basing them all on physics. Will this reduce the need for an assumption about that transcendent being? A complex and coherent system gives me a sense of 'leadership for the capital' much more than a chaotic and disintegrating system, which has no clear and uniform rules governing it.

All of this certainly appears in the book (see, for example, the transitional paragraph on pp. 77-8), but I think there was room to refine it further, and to devote a space of its own to these questions. This omission is related to the point at which I began. Beyond stating the facts and describing what is implied by them, I believe it is very important to confront the arguments head-on, using philosophical and analytical tools. The alternative of evolution, which overlaps most of the book, is not directly discussed. And again, this is not about evolution as a scientific field, but about the philosophical perception that accompanies many in relation to it and its conclusions.

This is one point, which should not cloud the reading experience of this highly recommended book. After finishing reading it, I eagerly await the next two parts that Shalit promises us, the one dealing with history and the person, and the one dealing with Israel.