Physics as Spiritual Exercise

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Can physics be beneficial for bringing about human moral and spiritual goods? Modern physics is perpetually in search for grand unification of our world-pictures, but its method is arbitrarily self-limiting in ruling out any place in its conception of nature for the human as spiritual and moral beings. But this estrangement between nature and the human has not always been the case. Drawing from Pierre Hadot’s pioneering work, this essay retrieves the notion of physics as ‘spiritual exercise’ from ancient philosophy and early Christianity for reimagining the enterprise of physics today. Envisaged as spiritual exercise, ancient physics goes beyond a mere acquisition of ‘objective’ knowledge of nature towards the fashioning of human moral and spiritual transformation. Illustrating from Origen of Alexandria, I show that this vision of physics is principally grounded upon a metaphysics that unites all parts of nature, including human nature, into a single whole. This chapter argues that it is desirable to retrieve the ancient vision today not as a displacement of modern physics but through the re-invention of natural philosophy alongside it. This retrieval should give urgency to the task of rethinking the desirability of a comprehensive and unified metaphysical account of nature for today.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAfter Science and Religon : Fresh Perspectives from Philosophy and Theology
EditorsPeter Harrison, John Milbank
Number of pages16
Place of PublicationCambridge
PublisherCambridge University Press
Publication dateMay 2022
Pages282-298
Chapter12
ISBN (Print)978-1-316-51792-5
ISBN (Electronic)978-1-009-04796-8
Publication statusPublished - May 2022
Externally publishedYes

ID: 370120934