Panentheism, the Background and Spirit in the Thought of Arthur Eddington

This, the second in a series of personal reflections on panentheism, focuses on the basis within our scientific understanding of the world that leads to the view of God as the underlying foundation of both mind and matter. Arthur Eddington serves as our primary guide.

In the previous post I explained how investigating the idea of dual aspect monism led me to a belief in something that goes deeper than what we know or possibly can know about nature through science. Past the molecules, past the elements, past the atoms, past the electrons, protons and neutrons, past the quarks and Higgs boson. Below all that there is a “background.” Some today might consider it the “quantum background” which some have said is the “nothing” from which the universe emerged, but is filled with zero point energy. Pre-geometry, John Archibald Wheeler called it, the “mother-sea” William James called it, the “holomovement” David Bohm called it, the unus mundus Pauli and Jung called it. But Eddington, a theist, is the one who considered it “the background” and called it “spirit.” I shall call it Spirit and consider it the Third Person of the Trinity.

The mind-body problem

One implication is the potential for this view to address perhaps the greatest mystery in science today…