Introduction.

On the first day eight noetic creatures were created, seven in silence and one by verbal command, and this was light; on the second day the firmament was created; on the third day God gathered the waters and made herbs blossom forth; on the fourth day, the division of light; on the fifth day, the birds, reptiles and fish; and on the sixth day, the animals and man. (I/26 (132) = PR 25 (187–188).

The quotation above is from an early chapter entitled: The Structure of the Created World, contained in the book, The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian (Cistern, 2000), by Fr. Hilarion Alfeyev (see page 44). What struck me about this passage was the presentation of a universe moving from an immaterial and abstract potentiality (invisible spirit) to a tangible and concrete actuality (visible matter).

Peirce on the Evolution of Consciousness.

In his essay: The Law of Mind, C.S Peirce presented his theory of tychism where he stated that real factor operative in the universe was chance or indeterminism, not mechanism or determinism. The difficult and eccentric thinker then defended this thesis based on four generally observable traits: such as the development of complexity, the presence of variety and diversity, aspects of regularity and intelligibility, and the presence of subjectivity (consciousness and feeling). (CP6.135)

Elsewhere, amongst the first volume of the Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, we find the comment that:

If all things are continuous, the universe must be undergoing a continuous growth from non-existence to existence. There is no difficulty in conceiving existence as a matter of degree. The reality of things consists in their persistent forcing themselves upon our recognition. If a thing has no such persistence, it is a mere dream. Reality, then, is persistence, is regularity. In the original chaos, where there was no regularity, there was no existence. It was all a confused dream. This we may suppose was in the infinitely distant past. But as things are getting more regular, more persistent, they are getting less dreamy and more real. (CP1.175)

Furthermore, in a piece entitled: A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God, he writes:

Of the three Universes of Experience familiar to us all, the first comprises all mere Ideas, those airy nothings to which the mind of poet, pure mathematician, or another might give local habitation and a name within that mind. Their very airy-nothingness, the fact that their Being consists in mere capability of getting thought, not in anybody’s actually thinking them, save their Reality. The second Universe is that of the Brute Actuality of things and facts. I am confident that their Being consists in reactions against Brute forces, notwithstanding objections redoubtable until they are closely and fairly examined. The third Universe comprises everything whose Being consists in active power to establish connections between different objects, especially between objects in different Universes. Such is everything which is essentially a Sign, — not the mere body of the Sign, which is not essentially such, but, so to speak, the Sign’s Soul, which has its Being in its power of serving as intermediary between its Object and a Mind. Such, too, is a living consciousness, and such the life, the power of growth of a plant. Such is a living institution, — a daily newspaper, a great fortune, a social “movement.” (EP 2: 435)

A Peircean Interpretation of St. Isaac’s Evolutionary Cosmology.

By applying Peircean thinking to the above passage by St. Isaac, a more subtle and nuanced appreciation of the Genesis creation narrative comes into perspective, unhindered by the doltish dogmatism of reductionist materialism.

Beginning with the noetic, unembodied angelic powers; there is the airy-nothingness of impersonalised feeling and pure potentiality. This is a quality of sentience with an immediate and flawless knowledge of being that is utterly unencumbered by doubt. This universe of experience which Peirce attributed to Mere Ideas can be aligned with God the Father as the source of origination and possibility within the Holy Trinity: the House of Being.

It should be noted here that the initial light was not physical light, but uncreated (verbal) light which represents God’s divine energies (energeiai) as distinct from his essence (ousia). It is through the uncreated light of the divine energies that God informs and sustains Creation: persuasively advancing it forth on a creative adventure from abstract potentiality to concrete reality.

The second to fifth days are occupied with issues of diremption: the parting of the sky, gathering of the water, and division of created light. This is the realm of Brute Actuality, where there is a presence of action and reaction. That is, of force and resistance in a mutually implicated world. Rather than a passing thought, otherness becomes established as a fact. There can be experience, apprehension, and testimony; all of which contribute to phenomenological fallibility. It is here that consciousness and language emerge, as a burgeoning ego finds itself tested and challenged in its dreamy ignorance by fleshly trial and error. The presence of blossoming herbs: plants with dull consciousness, testifies to this development. Such an embodied world can be attributed to God the Son as the affirmer and actualiser within the divine relationship: the Tree of Life.

Another observation worthy of mention is here is the distinction between the birds, reptiles, and fish of the fifth day with animals and man of the sixth day. This is not a value-judgement upon the worth of various creatures within Creation but a symbolic distinction. The former class are considered flighty, skittish, and slippery. While the latter are deemed modulated, composed, and focused. Sky and sea are ethereal, while the earth is tangible and substantial. The fable here is one of grounding: from ideal and abstract dissipation to real concentrated relationality.

The sixth day sees the coming of the animals and humans. This universe of experience is that of the Sign: associated with the Holy Spirit with His role in continuation and elicitation within the Holy Trinity as the Mountain of Ascent. Here there is representation and mediation: language, culture, art, and society; all built around habits, laws, and necessity.

The Continuity between the Evolution of the Universe and the Development of Human Selfhood.

To recapitulate the evolutionary cosmology outlined above, the universe begins like a human infant in a state where only actual and present feeling has any importance. There is the elementary subjectivity associated with the spooky action of subatomic particles, molecular clouds, gravitational collapse, and the stirrings of complex but primitive chemical and organic life. It is a vague and abstract world realm brimming with ideas, chance, and possibility.

Next comes the concretised cosmos of action, resistance, and relation. This is an embodied universe of discreteness, definiteness, and singularity, of references and correlates. There is the dull round of marching planets, clashing continents, great extinctions, with nature red in tooth and claw. In human developmental terms, this is a tactile child with a body as the centre of its reality. It can act and react to the world around it as the nasty brutishness of actuality protrudes and disenchants the blissful ignorance of imagination and fantasy. With corporeality comes a recognition of otherness and relationality: the need to accommodate, negotiate, and compromise.

The development of the next step comes by way of instinct and imitation. There are signs, objects, and interpretants. As subjectivity advances up the great chain of life and being there is an increasing assertiveness of reason and refinement of cognition through intentionality and purposefulness. A mediative and communicative function is present, be that the waggle-dance of bees or the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. Humanity can perform a mediating function because they are products of it: they possess and utilise the capacity to interpret and produce interactions with the lived environment regarding their ideal purposes. They can conjure ideas, test their theories, adapt their actions, and engender real transformative change in the world. Such intentionality is the foundation society, art, culture, and civilization. In short, sign-relations precede and anticipate the development of a conscious self.

Just as the cosmos moves from chance and possibility to brute actuality, and to law and necessity. So too does human selfhood advance from the mere ephemeral entertainment of feeling in infancy, to the experimental action and reaction of childhood, and onto the sign-mediation of youth and beyond.

Character, Personality, and Time: Cosmic and Human.

In a previous essay entitled: The Seamless Garment: A Groundork for an Eastern Orthodox Process Theology, I stated that Creation is a finite and evolving spatial and temporal medium contained within the infinite and absolute reality of God as a Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The creative advance of the universe is sustained and informed by His uncreated energies which represent the divine life outside of God. The world was brought into being to permit participation in the divine life while safeguarding the ontological integrity of both.

Given the finite spatial and temporal nature of Creation, it is inherently fallible. In negative terms, the universe is a locus of ignorance, frustration, and error. But a positive model discloses a space where inquiry, experimentation, and ideal embodiment are possible. As such, Creation itself can be defined by the universal presence, elemental fact, or pathos of doubt. Likewise, the mortal human inquirer is tormented by objective uncertainty or anxiety. Initiation into language by way of instinct and imitation discloses the presence of testimonies to truth and error greater than those available to individual personal experience.

To say that all living creatures engage in some form of sign-relations is a crass application of ontological levelling. What can be said of the creatures constituting the animal kingdom is that they have character. That is, a set of instincts and behaviours that define their being from which they identify immediately and absolutely. Human beings, by contrast, have an intentional personality which unfolds in time as self-seeking and self-transcending. Where animals are enraptured by themselves, humans are enticed beyond the self. Like the realisation and embodiment of an idea, the human person requires a lifetime to manifest and apprehend the fullness of its being, with the accompaniment of a community to give testimony to truth and error. The individual human subject cannot advance singularly up the vertical axis of the Cross without expanding socially outward along the horizontal axis.

Now if the Holy Trinity is a communion in love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; then proper to the person of the Son is the Incarnate figure of Christ. And contained within Christ by order of magnitude are the body of One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church; the human ecumene (global community/village) of the Sacred Earth created in His image and likeness; and the universe of Creation itself.

Just as Christ is an absolute personality, so too are the structures contained within Him super-personalities: the body of the Church, the human ecumene, and Creation; all requiring the fullness of time to move from abstract reality to concrete reality. These super-personal structures are Marian in conception: that is, their objective is realise divine providential intention in spatial-temporal reality through processes of labour, suturing finite and infinite.

As the singular and absolute Logos, the one true sign from which the many signs (logoi) proceed, Creation can be described as signs all the way down. In short, the more God distils the concrete actuality of His being into the abstract potentiality of His divine intentions through the uncreated energies, the more the created universe moves from abstract potentiality (invisible spirit) to concrete actuality (visible matter). Thus, the inherent goodness of Creation is located in its function as a locus for experimentation, medium for communication, and as a resource for the creation of value.

The Theory of Process-Theological Tychism.

By way of a conclusion, I will end this discussion with my proposal for a theory of Theological-Persuasive Tychism. That is, proposition which seeks to reconcile the randomness and spontaneity of events with a divinely orchestrated plan predicated upon persuasiveness, rather than coerciveness. There are three foundational principles to this proposal, which are as follows:

1. Instrumental Chance: Rather than antithetical to God’s providential intentionality, chance is instrumental to it, permitting genuine novelty, creativity, and freedom in the cosmos. The horizon of possibility presented by chance in the universe permits God to act persuasively as opposed to coercively.
2. Persuasiveness: God’s gentle guidance through offering potentials to be realised with Creation respects its ontological autonomy. By establishing the conditions of possibility through His providential intentionality, God permits ample space and time for spontaneity and evolution.
3. Cooperation (the Marian Paradigm): The humble and voluntary obedience and acceptance to God’s providential intentions by the Holy Virgin Mary at the Annunciation is emblematic of the cooperative or co-creative relationship He seeks with Creation. Just as the Flowering Rod was voluntarily offered to synergistically participate in the divine plan for the cosmos, so too, is all Creation.

In this theory, cosmic randomness and unpredictability are expressions of Creation’s autonomy, aligned with a divine providential intentionality that is persuasive, not coercive. From the perspective of Theological-Persuasive Tychism, the unpredictable aspects of the universe are seen not as deviations from a divine plan but as affirmations of a deeper cosmic freedom. The universe, in its unwieldy volatility, becomes a formative medium for affirmative activity. That is, it exists as a horizon of possibility which is radically open to novelty, development, and experimentation.

Sources and References.

~ The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian (Cistern, 2000) by Fr. Hilarion Alfeyev.

~The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce: Volumes 1–8 (HUP 1958/1994).

~The Essential Peirce: Volumes One and Two (IUP 1992/1998).