- 7400 Bay Road,
University Center, MI 48710
Jeffrey Koperski
Saginaw Valley State University, Philosophy, Faculty Member
Theologians and philosophers of religion have become increasingly interested in science, and especially in the area of physics. From the fine-tuning of universal constants to quantum mechanics, relativity, and cosmology, physics is a... more
Theologians and philosophers of religion have become increasingly interested in science, and especially in the area of physics. From the fine-tuning of universal constants to quantum mechanics, relativity, and cosmology, physics is a subject surprisingly widespread in its connection to the area of religion. Bridging the gap between these fields, however, has proven to be problematic; those in religion and the humanities typically interact with the mathematical sciences only at a popular level, and physicists are often dismissive of metaphysics and religion.
The Physics of Theism offers a significant and necessary middle ground between these disciplines, presenting a critical analysis of the ways in which physics is intertwined within matters of religion. Bringing clarity to often complex arguments, Koperski covers a broad range of issues which include divine action, free will, the fine-tuning argument, naturalism, the laws of nature, the relation between science and religion, and the controversy over Intelligent Design. The text is ideal for both students and scholars, providing the appropriate level of explanation of arguments to provide a starting point for research, while at the same time delivering an important contribution to current scholarship.
The Physics of Theism offers a significant and necessary middle ground between these disciplines, presenting a critical analysis of the ways in which physics is intertwined within matters of religion. Bringing clarity to often complex arguments, Koperski covers a broad range of issues which include divine action, free will, the fine-tuning argument, naturalism, the laws of nature, the relation between science and religion, and the controversy over Intelligent Design. The text is ideal for both students and scholars, providing the appropriate level of explanation of arguments to provide a starting point for research, while at the same time delivering an important contribution to current scholarship.
Research Interests:
Theologians continue to debate the question of divine action in a law-governed world. Chapter 1 explains why philosophy needs to be more involved in the conversation. The most important reason is that foundational issues are seldom... more
Theologians continue to debate the question of divine action in a law-governed world. Chapter 1 explains why philosophy needs to be more involved in the conversation. The most important reason is that foundational issues are seldom addressed in the science and religion literature. For example, while many deny that God would violate the laws of nature, few offer any analysis of the nature of the laws of nature-a topic widely discussed by philosophers of science. The chapter explains three broad approaches to how divine action relates to the laws that will be used throughout the book and ends with an overview of each chapter.
Research Interests:
While scientists sometimes make light of philosophy, science relies on a variety of philosophical assumptions, such as the idea that there are laws of nature. Many of these arose during the Scientific Revolution with the rejection of... more
While scientists sometimes make light of philosophy, science relies on a variety of philosophical assumptions, such as the idea that there are laws of nature. Many of these arose during the Scientific Revolution with the rejection of Aristotelianism. Here we consider the theological motivations behind several key examples. While science is now officially naturalistic, its rise depended in part on theology.
Research Interests:
In "Koperski's New (Improved?) Decretalism," Robert Larmer argues that my version of nomological realism about the laws of nature logically entails occasionalism. Here I clarify and defend my view against this charge. The main... more
In "Koperski's New (Improved?) Decretalism," Robert Larmer argues that my version of nomological realism about the laws of nature logically entails occasionalism. Here I clarify and defend my view against this charge. The main disagreement is whether a proper account of the laws of nature must involve dynamic production-what is commonly called oomph.
Research Interests:
Occasionalism is often seen as a peculiarity of early modern philosophy. The idea that God is the sole source of efficient causation in the world strikes many as at best implausible. It was, however, a natural inference based on the... more
Occasionalism is often seen as a peculiarity of early modern philosophy. The idea that God is the sole source of efficient causation in the world strikes many as at best implausible. It was, however, a natural inference based on the seventeenth-century view that the laws of nature are simply God's decrees. The question here is whether such a view and its more recent descendants entail occasionalism. I argue that they do not, but showing why involves a new take on what exactly the laws of nature do.
Research Interests:
While ‘random’ is a familiar word, it takes on a variety of definitions across mathematics and the sciences. This paper gives an overview of the terrain, looking at how randomness and closely related terms are used in a variety of... more
While ‘random’ is a familiar word, it takes on a variety of definitions across mathematics and the sciences. This paper gives an overview of the terrain, looking at how randomness and closely related terms are used in a variety of disciplines. As will see, some are more relevant to the question of providence than others.
Research Interests:
In this reply to Łukasiewicz’s “Divine Providence and Chance in the World” (this issue), Iaddress two minor points and then amore significant one. First, what he calls “epistemic deism” is far more limited than its proponents generally... more
In this reply to Łukasiewicz’s “Divine Providence and Chance in the World” (this issue), Iaddress two minor points and then amore significant one. First, what he calls “epistemic deism” is far more limited than its proponents generally realize. Physics beyond the quantum level places severe restrictions on what God could do through the collapse of the wave-function. Second, his criticism of the fine-tuning design argument has unintended implications. If he is correct, then most physicists—theists or not—are wrong about what phenomena need an explanation. Third and most important, Łukasiewicz incorrectly believes that the laws of natureonly apply to closed systems. Fortunately, physics recognizes adivision of labor between different types of laws and non-nomic conditions that would allow his approach to divine action to be strengthened.
Research Interests:
Scientific knowledge is often categorized as experimental or theoretical. There is, however, a third layer where philosophy of science and science proper overlap, the realm of metatheoretic shaping principles. For example, we assume that... more
Scientific knowledge is often categorized as experimental or theoretical. There is, however, a third layer where philosophy of science and science proper overlap, the realm of metatheoretic shaping principles. For example, we assume that the causal regularities observed today will also hold tomorrow. Researchers are thereby relying on two metaphysical doctrines: the uniformity of nature and mechanistic causation. There are also the “explanatory virtues” of simplicity, testability, internal and external coherence, fruitfulness, and wide scope. My first goal is to categorize these principles and show how they’ve operated in the history of science. Particular attention will be paid to their suspension and rejection, even of widely held principles. My second goal is to consider how certain shaping principles impinge on open theology. Of particular interest will be naturalism (both metaphysical and methodological), reductionism, and realism. Surprisingly, differences within the open theology camp are more relevant to these issues than open theism itself.
Research Interests:
Scientific knowledge is not merely a matter of reconciling theories and laws with data and observations. Science presupposes a number of metatheoretic shaping principles in order to judge good methods and theories from bad. Some of these... more
Scientific knowledge is not merely a matter of reconciling theories and laws with data and observations. Science presupposes a number of metatheoretic shaping principles in order to judge good methods and theories from bad. Some of these principles are metaphysical (e.g., the uniformity of nature) and some are methodological (e.g., the need for repeatable experiments). While many shaping principles have endured since the scientific revolution, others have changed in response to conceptual pressures both from within science and without. Many of them have theistic roots. For example, the notion that nature conforms to mathematical laws flows directly from the early modern presupposition that there is a divine Lawgiver. This interplay between theism and shaping principles is often unappreciated in discussions about the relation between science and religion. Today, of course, naturalists reject the influence of theism and prefer to do science on their terms. But as Robert Koons and Alvin Plantinga have argued, this is more difficult than is typically assumed. In particular, they argue, metaphysical naturalism is in conflict with several metatheoretic shaping principles, especially explanatory virtues such as simplicity and with scientific realism more broadly. I will discuss these arguments as well as possible responses. In the end, theism is able to provide justification for the philosophical foundations of science that naturalism cannot.
Research Interests:
For quantum mechanics to form the crux of a robust model of divine action, random quantum fluctuations must be amplified into the macroscopic realm. What has not been recognized in the divine action literature to date is the degree to... more
For quantum mechanics to form the crux of a robust model of divine action, random quantum fluctuations must be amplified into the macroscopic realm. What has not been recognized in the divine action literature to date is the degree to which differential dynamics, continuum mechanics, and condensed matter physics prevent such fluctuations from infecting meso- and macroscopic systems. Once all of the relevant physics is considered, models of divine action based on quantum randomness are shown to be far more limited than is generally assumed. Unless some sort of new physical mechanism is discovered, the amplification problem cannot be solved.
Research Interests:
Some phenomena within nature exhibit such exquisiteness of structure, function or interconnectedness that many people have found it natural—if not inescapable—to see a deliberative and directive mind behind those phenomena. The mind... more
Some phenomena within nature exhibit such exquisiteness of structure, function or interconnectedness that many people have found it natural—if not inescapable—to see a deliberative and directive mind behind those phenomena. The mind in question, being prior to nature itself, is typically taken to be supernatural. Philosophically inclined thinkers have both historically and at present labored to shape the relevant intuition into a more formal, logically rigorous inference. The resultant theistic arguments, in their various logical forms, share a focus on plan, purpose, intention and design, and are thus classified as teleological arguments (or, frequently, as arguments from or to design).
Although enjoying some prominent defenders over the centuries, such arguments have also attracted serious criticisms from a number of major historical and contemporary thinkers. Both critics and advocates are found not only among philosophers, but come from scientific and other disciplines as well. In the following discussion, major variant forms of teleological arguments will be distinguished and explored, traditional philosophical and other criticisms will be discussed, and the most prominent contemporary turns (cosmic fine tuning arguments, many-worlds theories, and the present Intelligent Design debate) will be tracked. Discussion will conclude with a brief look at one historically important non-inferential approach to the issue.
Although enjoying some prominent defenders over the centuries, such arguments have also attracted serious criticisms from a number of major historical and contemporary thinkers. Both critics and advocates are found not only among philosophers, but come from scientific and other disciplines as well. In the following discussion, major variant forms of teleological arguments will be distinguished and explored, traditional philosophical and other criticisms will be discussed, and the most prominent contemporary turns (cosmic fine tuning arguments, many-worlds theories, and the present Intelligent Design debate) will be tracked. Discussion will conclude with a brief look at one historically important non-inferential approach to the issue.
Research Interests:
One of the main arguments against interventionist views of special divine action is that God would not violate his own laws. But if intervention entails the breaking of natural law, what precisely is being broken? While the nature of... more
One of the main arguments against interventionist views of special divine action is that God would not violate his own laws. But if intervention entails the breaking of natural law, what precisely is being broken? While the nature of the laws of nature has been widely explored by philosophers of science, important distinctions are often ignored in the science and religion literature. In this paper, I consider the three main approaches to laws: Humean anti-realism, supervenience on more fundamental aspects of metaphysics, and nomological realism. The first denies that there is any metaphysical reality behind laws or causation. The second holds that laws supervene on capacities, dispositions, or counterfactuals. The third takes laws to be irreducible aspects of reality. The mechanics of special divine action and worries about intervention vary depending on which view of law one holds. In the end, I argue that early modern natural philosophers, who first introduced law-language for nature, largely had it right. Laws are not created entities or powers that act as intermediaries between God and nature; they are best understood as expressions of God’s will for nature. The outstanding question is whether such a view inevitably lands in occasionalism.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Four arguments are examined in order to assess the state of the Intelligent Design debate. First, critics continually cite the fact that ID proponents have religious motivations. When used as criticism of ID arguments, this is an obvious... more
Four arguments are examined in order to assess the state of the Intelligent Design debate. First, critics continually cite the fact that ID proponents have religious motivations. When used as criticism of ID arguments, this is an obvious ad hominem. Nonetheless, philosophers and scientists alike continue to wield such arguments for their rhetorical value. Second, in his expert testimony in the Dover trial, philosopher Robert Pennock used repudiated claims in order to brand ID as a kind of pseudoscience. His arguments hinge on the nature of methodological naturalism as a metatheoretic shaping principle. We examine the use of such principles in science and the history of science. Special attention is given to the demarcation problem. Third, the scientific merits of ID are examined. Critics rightly demand more than promissory notes for ID to move beyond the fringe. Fourth, although methodological naturalism gets a lot of attention, there is another shaping principle to contend with, namely, conservatism. Science, like most disciplines, tends to change in an incremental rather than revolutionary manner. When ID is compared to other non- or quasi-Darwinian proposals, it appears to be a more radical solution than is needed in the face of the anomalies.
Research Interests:
This paper continues a dialogue that began with an article by Jeffrey Koperski entitled “Two Bad Ways to Attack Intelligent Design and Two Good Ones,” published in the June 2008 issue of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science. In a... more
This paper continues a dialogue that began with an article by Jeffrey Koperski entitled “Two Bad Ways to Attack Intelligent Design and Two Good Ones,” published in the June 2008 issue of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science. In a response article, Christopher Pynes argues that ad hominem arguments are sometimes legitimate, especially when critiquing Intelligent Design (2012). We show that Pynes’s examples only apply to matters of testimony, not the kinds of arguments found in the best defenses of ID.
Research Interests:
Three well-known physicists have recently argued that libertarian freedom is impossible. In their view, free will is incompatible with what we know about science at the most fundamental level. Here I show that their arguments presuppose a... more
Three well-known physicists have recently argued that libertarian freedom is impossible. In their view, free will is incompatible with what we know about science at the most fundamental level. Here I show that their arguments presuppose a naïve version of reductionism and consider two alternatives, one appealing to mind–body dualism and the other to emergentism. The former says that free will is a capacity of one’s mind, an immaterial entity not subject to the laws of nature. The latter says that free will is an emergent capacity that cannot be reduced to the properties of an agent’s constitutive atoms. These alternatives, however, face the same problem: They seem to violate a fundamental law, namely the conservation of energy. I show how the libertarian can respond to this objection.
Research Interests:
In his recent anthology, Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics, Robert Pennock continues his attack on what he considers to be the pseudoscience of Intelligent Design Theory. In this critical review, I discuss the main issues... more
In his recent anthology, Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics, Robert Pennock continues his attack on what he considers to be the pseudoscience of Intelligent Design Theory. In this critical review, I discuss the main issues in the debate. Although the rhetoric is often heavy and the articles are intentionally stacked against Intelligent Design, there are many interesting topics in the philosophy of science to be found. I conclude that, contra Pennock, there is nothing intrinsically unscientific about Intelligent Design. At this stage, however, it remains more of a provocative idea than a research program. Whether design theorists can bridge this gap is still very much in question. In any case, the debate serves as a modern case study for such classic problems as the nature of scientific explanations, theory change, the demarcation problem, and the role of metaphysical assumptions in the development of science.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
A brief discussion of noninterventionist arguments for divine action.
Research Interests:
The word “model” is highly ambiguous, and there is no uniform terminology used by either scientists or philosophers. Here, a model is considered to be a representation of some object, behavior, or system that one wants to understand.... more
The word “model” is highly ambiguous, and there is no uniform terminology used by either scientists or philosophers. Here, a model is considered to be a representation of some object, behavior, or system that one wants to understand. This article presents the most common type of models found in science as well as the different relations—traditionally called “analogies”—between models and between a given model and its subject. Although once considered merely heuristic devices, they are now seen as indispensable to modern science. There are many different types of models used across the scientific disciplines, although there is no uniform terminology to classify them. The most familiar are physical models such as scale replicas of bridges or airplanes. These, like all models, are used because of their “analogies” to the subjects of the models. A scale model airplane has a structural similarity or “material analogy” to the full scale version. This correspondence allows engineers to infer dynamic properties of the airplane based on wind tunnel experiments on the replica. Physical models also include abstract representations which often include idealizations such as frictionless planes and point masses. Another, but completely different type of model, is constituted by sets of equations. These mathematical models were not always deemed legitimate models by philosophers. Model-to-subject and model-to-model relations are described using several different types of analogies: positive, negative, neutral, material, and formal.
Research Interests:
Biographical entry for philosopher Del Ratzsch.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Special divine action (SDA) is the technical name for how God interacts with nature aside from holding it in existence. When it comes to miracles, many scholars have adopted David Hume’s contention that such events require a violation of... more
Special divine action (SDA) is the technical name for how God interacts with nature aside from holding it in existence. When it comes to miracles, many scholars have adopted David Hume’s contention that such events require a violation of natural law. Although the Humean way of framing the issue is also disputed, some theists have sought ways in which God might actively govern nature without violating its divinely-authored laws
Research Interests:
Review of Michael Dodds's Unlocking Divine Action
Research Interests:
An overview of determinism in physics
Research Interests:
Preface to current book project