Speech for the diner in Honor of Bernard d’Espagnat

When Jack Templeton informed me that my nomination of Bernard d’Espagnat for the Templeton Prize was successful, I must say that it was one of my life biggest joys! And this for 2 reasons:

First, of course, because of the recognition such a prize contributes to give to the work of Bernard d’Espagnat, on whose importance I will come back in a moment, but also because of the fact that it represented the achievement of a process of construction of a bridge above the Atlantic, more exactly between the Anglo-Saxon thinking and the French thinking.

The field that the Anglo-Saxons call “Science and Religion” and that, for the sake of being less provoking, we call in France “the philosophical and metaphysical implications of Science” is particularly developed with Scientists such as Paul Davies, John Polkingohrne, Arthur Peacocke, Freeman Dyson, Charles Townes, John Barrow, all Tempelton prize recipients.

But when I was invited for the first time at the John Templeton Board of Advisors in London 12 years ago, and discovered this universe – that is so little known in France (to think that thinkers as important as John Polkinghorne, Arthur Peacocke, Philip Clayton, Simon Conway Morris, Keith Ward, George Ellis, Bob Russell and many others, have never been translated in French!!), not only haven’t I stopped studying them, but also been trying to share with them all the richness of the French personalities, being Scientists much more than theologians, who also worked in one way or the other, on the philosophical and metaphysical implications of science.

Tonight we have Jean Kovalesvky, Bruno Guiderdoni, Basarab Nicolescu, Jean-François Lambert, Henry de Lumley, we could also have Dominique Laplane and Father Thierry Magnin, who were invited but couldn’t come. Each, in his own way, belongs to this field and contributes to make it progress. So I haven’t stopped to build this conceptual and intellectual bridge between the Anglo-Saxon and French communities working in parallel domains.

The attribution of the Templeton Prize to Bernard d’Espagnat therefore represents an immense achievement for this work of bridge-building, and this even more so as he is only the second scientist who is of non-Anglo-Saxon origin, with Father Michael Heller, distinguished last year, to receive this Prize. It is a very important sign for the “crystallization” of a worldwide community working in this field, that once more we can call “Science and Religion” but which goes much beyond what we could call the stricto census dialogue between Science and Religion, since it is essentially a reflection on the philosophical, but more importantly, metaphysical implications of science.

Here, I have named a few persons, but for me, and of course it is only my opinion, the thoughts of Bernard d’Espagnat constitutes the flagship of this field.

It is impossible to summarize a thinking as complex as the one of Bernard d’Espagnat in a few minutes, especially in front of him, nonetheless I must say something in regard to the statement I just made about the quality of his thinking.

There are numerous scientists who have in different ways worked on this “new paradigm”, which brings a new re-enchantment of the world as called by Ilya Prigogine, or as Bernard d’Espagnat names it, “a re-opening of the path of meaning”. So why is his work the flagship of this field? First because Bernard d’Espagnat is an in-depth thinker. He told me once that for a book of interview where he was asked 52 questions, it took him 2 years as he needed 15 days just to respond to one of them! This is typical of the rigor and caution with which Bernard d’Espagnat has developed his thinking since 40 years, and it is why his thinking is so solid.

What does he demonstrate?

First the falseness of a mechanistic vision of a world; the one of a world made of small material points in interaction thanks to a certain number of forces. This falseness of this mechanistic vision leads to the falseness of another basic postulate, which we shall call here “separationism”. Meaning that what happens here, in certain conditions, cannot have influences over there. The experiences known as entanglement, or as non-locality, show us a global and holistic vision, with which, in particular conditions of course, what precisely happens here can also have an effect over there and 2 objects yet separated by dozens of kilometers, must be conceived as one single object transcending our space and time.

The idea that the world is made of localized object the existence of which does not depend on the human consciousness is incompatible with certain predictions of quantum mechanic and with facts established by experience. (1)

The other and last very important conclusion is that this world in which we live, a world immerged in space and time, energy, matter, is not ontologically sufficient, does not explain itself only by itself, is not self sufficient, cannot be its own cause.

I quote here d’Espagnat “Science doesn’t give authentically access to the Real in the ontological meaning of the word, but only to the links between phenomena. Relatively to our usual empirical reality, precisely the one of phenomena, the Real in itself – or “ontological” – can therefore be thought of a sort of non-knowable “surreal”.

What is very important here is that Bernard d’Espagnat does not present ideas, but facts he claims to be demonstrated by the knowledge of the Real we get from physics. According to Bernard d’Espagnat, this refutation of the mechanistic vision, this proof of the holistic, the global or non divisible character of the world and this proof of the non-ontological character of the reality level on which we live are provided by science and not philosophy. Thus, science wouldn’t prove a philosophy in particular but refutes a great number of philosophies. Not only those based on a universe of 10 000 years which would be the center of the world, but also all those based on the classical materialistic conceptions.

This does not ban any form of materialism but makes it much more difficult for it to be conceived.

Once this is demonstrated, one may go further, but it would then be speculation or a philosophical opinion and not strict scientifically demonstrated facts. Among those conjectures, we must nonetheless seriously consider the hypothesis of the existence of a “call of the Being” to Man ” (2), hypothesis upheld by the testimony of certain « intuitives », « mystics », « contemplatives ».

This is not scientifically proved but the knowledge on the world we get from science does not a priori put the existence of such calls in an absurd category, even though, for numerous modern philosophers and thinkers those are only auto-illusions and human inventions.

Here are three citations to finish off:

“One of the teachings of modern science “of so called matter” is the following: the “thing” if there is one, which remains preserved is not concrete but abstract. It is not something which is close to the senses but which on the contrary is a pure mathematically abstract number such as theoretical physics has revealed to us. In other terms, compared to our senses and the concepts that are familiar to us (which can assess the possibilities), reality is undeniably distant. In order to do justice to this very important discovery when we speak about it, I think that it is crucial to know that the word “matter” is the wrong one and that the more appropriate word “Being” should be reintroduced (3).”

What an extraordinary conceptual leap when what is considered as real is in fact abstract, not concrete and closer to mathematical formulae than a grain of sand! Quite the opposite of all the scientific and materialist conceptions of the previous centuries!

This is of extreme utmost importance because according to d’Espagnat, to leave references to the Being is one of the main causes of the crisis our civilization undergoes.

“Plato’s ideas do not belong to space-time but they exist independently of the human mind and are the cause of phenomena. This is why, when we talk of Plato, we sometimes talk of the realism of essences. In this sense (a distant independent reality, probably not situated in time and space-time), it is difficult for the philosophical realism of a physicist to avoid being a little bit Platonist. Bohm himself, previously a standard bearer of the “materialist” physicists, even says now that perceived objects are only projections of what exists (4).”

Thus we see a legitimization of a scientific Platonism which is a philosophical consequence of the scientific demonstration of our world’s non-ontological character.

Finally, d’Espagnat’s conception, among many other aspects, also applies to the issue of the mind and the spirit. D’Espagnat refutes the idea that the spirit could be an epiphenomenon resulting from matter, the summit of a vertical ladder starting from atoms up to matter because according to him, the characteristics of the atoms partly depend on the way we, the Human beings, observe them with our conscience. Exactly the same way a rainbow’s speed and position depend on the speed and position of the human being observing it; the rainbow does not have its own speed and position, particles constituting the structure of matter neither.

“We have seen that the ideas that this materialism uses as conceptual bases, atoms, particles etc, can only be the components of an empiric or epistemological realism, that is to say a division of reality which we manage by thought in order to give account of our communicable experience. It is clear that the thesis of thought as a mere epiphenomenon (that of a thought emanating from a brain purely composed of atoms) is logically incoherent since objects which are meant to explain thought only have an existence themselves relative to the thought.(5)”

So:

The necessity for the Real in itself, the true Real, to be a sort of “surreal” much more deeper than the world we live in,

The refutation of the mechanistic vision which is at the root of most of the common materialistic philosophies,

The reintroduction of the sense of the “Being” but also of a possible link between the Being and Man making the various testimonies of a certain number of mystics or contemplatives conceivable.

You see to what extent Bernard d’Espagnat’s thought is of primary importance for all those individuals who wish to reconcile the world’s rational knowledge with the basic intuitions of some of the great religious traditions, that is to say to reconcile Faith with Reason. This is why Bernard d’Espagnat’s thought is destined for a great future in the XXIst Century, as one of the significant steps of the conceptual revolution we are experiencing and which gets us from a world where science and religion would be separated to a world where they may be in dialogue, and this is the reason why attributing the Templeton Prize to Bernard d’Espagnat is very important and may fill us all with joy to night.

(1) Bernard d’Espagnat : Théorie quantique et réalité – Pour la Science – Janvier 1980

(2) Bernard d’Espagnat -“In search of reality” -1979 (page 172)

(3)Bernard d’Espagnat, Un atome de sagesse, Le Seuil, 1982, p. 55.

(4)Bernard d’Espagnat, Un atome de Sagesse, Le Seuil, 1982, p. 115.

(5) Bernard d’Espagnat, Traité de physique et de philosophie, Fayard, 2002, p. 307