# Theophysics

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In [philosophy](/source/Philosophy), **theophysics** is an approach to [cosmology](/source/Cosmology) that attempts to reconcile [physical cosmology](/source/Physical_cosmology) and [religious cosmology](/source/Religious_cosmology). It is related to [physicotheology](/source/Physicotheology), the difference between them being that the aim of physicotheology is to derive theology from physics, whereas that of theophysics is to unify physics and theology.

## Usage

[Paul Richard Blum](/source/Paul_Richard_Blum) (2002) uses the term in a critique of physicotheology, i.e. the view that arguments for the [existence of God](/source/Existence_of_God) can be derived from the existence of the physical world (e.g. the "[argument from design](/source/Argument_from_design)"). Theophysics would be the opposite approach, i.e. an approach to the material world informed by the knowledge that it is created by God.[1]

[Richard H. Popkin](/source/Richard_H._Popkin) (1990) applies the term to the "spiritual physics" of [Cambridge Platonist](/source/Cambridge_Platonist) [Henry More](/source/Henry_More) and his pupil and collaborator Lady [Anne Conway](/source/Anne_Conway,_Viscountess_Conway),[2] who enthusiastically accepted the new science, but rejected the various forms of materialist mechanism proposed by [Descartes](/source/Descartes), [Hobbes](/source/Hobbes) and [Spinoza](/source/Spinoza) to buttress it,[3] as these, More and Conway argued, were incapable of explaining productive causality.[4] Instead, More and Conway offered what Popkin calls "a genuine important alternative to modern mechanistic thought",[3] "a thoroughly scientific view with a metaphysics of spirits to make everything operate". Materialist mechanism triumphed, however, and today their spiritual cosmology, as Popkin notes, "looks very odd indeed".[4]

The term has been applied by some philosophers to the system of [Emanuel Swedenborg](/source/Emanuel_Swedenborg). [William Denovan](/source/William_Denovan) (1889) wrote in *[Mind](/source/Mind_(journal))*: "The highest stage of his revelation might be denominated *Theophysics*, or the science of Divine purpose in creation."[5] R. M. Wenley (1910) referred to Swedenborg as "the Swedish theophysicist".[6]

Pierre Laberge (1972) observes that [Kant](/source/Immanuel_Kant)'s famous critique of physicotheology in the *[Critique of Pure Reason](/source/Critique_of_Pure_Reason)* (1781; second edition 1787) has tended to obscure the fact that in his early work, *General History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens* (1755), Kant defended a physicotheology that at the time was startlingly original, but that succeeded only to the extent that it concealed what Laberge terms a theophysics ("ce que nous appellerons une *théophysique*").[7]

Theophysics is a fundamental concept in the thought of [Raimon Panikkar](/source/Raimon_Panikkar), who wrote in *Ontonomía de la ciencia* (1961) that he was looking for "a theological vision of Science that is not a [Metaphysics](/source/Metaphysics), but a Theophysics.... It is not a matter of a Physics 'of God', but rather of the 'God of the Physical'; of God the creator of the world... not the world as autonomous being, independent and disconnected from God, but rather ontonomicly linked to Him". As a vision of "Science as theology", it became central to Panikkar's "cosmotheandric" view of reality.[8]

[Frank J. Tipler](/source/Frank_J._Tipler)'s [Omega Point](/source/Omega_Point) theory (1994), which identifies concepts from [physical cosmology](/source/Physical_cosmology) with theistic concepts, is sometimes referred to by the term,[9] although not by Tipler himself. Tipler was an atheist when he wrote *[The Anthropic Cosmological Principle](/source/The_Anthropic_Cosmological_Principle)* (1986, co-authored with [John D. Barrow](/source/John_D._Barrow), whose many popular books seldom mention theology) and *[The Physics of Immortality](/source/The_Physics_of_Immortality_(book))* (1994),[10] but a Christian when he wrote *The Physics of Christianity* (2007). In 1989, [Wolfhart Pannenberg](/source/Wolfhart_Pannenberg), a [liberal theologian](/source/Liberal_theologian) in the [continental Protestant](/source/Continental_Reformed_Protestantism) tradition, welcomed Tipler's work on cosmology as raising "the prospect of a rapprochement between physics and theology in the area of [eschatology](/source/Eschatology)".[11] In subsequent essays, while not concurring with all the details of Tipler's discussion, Pannenberg has defended the theology of the Omega Point.[9]

## See also

- [Anthropic principle](/source/Anthropic_principle)
- [Fine-tuned universe](/source/Fine-tuned_universe)
- [List of science and religion scholars](/source/List_of_science_and_religion_scholars)
- [Multiverse](/source/Multiverse)
- [Natural theology](/source/Natural_theology)
- [Omega Point](/source/Omega_Point)
- [Tipler's Omega Point](/source/Frank_J._Tipler#The_Omega_Point)
- [Ultimate fate of the universe](/source/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe)
- *[Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science](/source/Zygon:_Journal_of_Religion_and_Science)*

## References

1. Paul Richard Blum, "Divine project: from physical-theology to theophysics", *Philosophisches Jahrbuch* ISSN [0031-8183](https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0031-8183), 2002, Vol. 109, No. 2, pp. 271-282.

1. Richard H. Popkin, "The Spiritualistic Cosmologies of Henry More and Anne Conway", in [Sarah Hutton](/source/Sarah_Hutton) (ed.), *Henry More (1614–1687): Tercentenary Studies*. Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 1990, p. 105. ISBN 0-7923-0095-5

1. Popkin, "Cosmologies", p. 98.

1. Popkin, "Cosmologies", p. 111.

1. William Denovan, ["A Swedenborgian View of the Problem of Philosophy"](http://www.newtheism.com/papers/W.Denovan/a_swedenborgian_view.htm), *Mind*, Vol. 14, No. 54 (April 1889), pp. 216–229.

1. R. M. Wenley, *Kant and His Philosophical Revolution*. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1910, p. 161.

1. Pierre Laberge, ["La physicothéologie de l'*Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels* (1755)"](http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/phlou_00353841_1972_num_70_8_5698), *[Revue Philosophique de Louvain](/source/Revue_Philosophique_de_Louvain)*, 1972, Vol. 70, No. 8, pp. 541–572.

1. ["Theophysics"](http://www.raimon-panikkar.org/english/gloss-theophysics.html), raimon-panikkar.org

1. [Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist](http://theophysics.chimehost.net/)

1. Frank J. Tipler, *The Physics of Immortality*, Chapter XII.

1. Wolfhart Pannenberg, "Theological Appropriation of Scientific Understandings: Response to Hefner, Wicker, Eaves, and Tipler", *Zygon*, Vol. 24, Issue 2 (June 1989), p. 255.

## Further reading

- [John D. Barrow](/source/John_D._Barrow) and [Frank J. Tipler](/source/Frank_J._Tipler), Foreword by [John A. Wheeler](/source/John_Archibald_Wheeler), 1986. *[The Anthropic Cosmological Principle](/source/Anthropic_Principle)*. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-851949-4. [Excerpt from Chapter 1.](http://www.dhushara.com/book/quantcos/anth/anth.htm)
- [William Lane Craig](/source/William_Lane_Craig) and Quentin Smith, 1993. *[Theism](/source/Theism), [Atheism](/source/Atheism), and [Big Bang](/source/Big_Bang) Cosmology*. Oxford Univ. Press.
- [William Dembski](/source/William_Dembski), 1998. *The Design Inference*. Cambridge Univ. Press.
- [David Deutsch](/source/David_Deutsch), 1997. *[The Fabric of Reality](/source/The_Fabric_of_Reality)* New York: Alan Lane. ISBN 0-7139-9061-9. Extracts from [Chapter 14: "The Ends of the Universe,"](https://web.archive.org/web/20090829115319/http://geocities.com/theophysics/deutsch-ends-of-the-universe.html) with additional comments by Frank J. Tipler; also available [here](http://www.math.tulane.edu/~tipler/physicist.html) and [here.](http://www.math.tulane.edu/~tipler/tipler/tipler4.html)
- [Arthur Eddington](/source/Arthur_Eddington), 1930. *Why I Believe in God: Science and Religion, as a Scientist Sees It*.
- [George Ellis](/source/George_Francis_Rayner_Ellis) and [Nancey Murphy](/source/Nancey_Murphy), 1996. *On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics*. Augsburg Fortress Publishers. ISBN 0-8006-2983-3
- [Henry Margenau](/source/Henry_Margenau), 1992. *Cosmos, Bios, Theos Scientists Reflect on Science, God, and the Origins of the Universe, Life, and Homo sapiens*. Open Court.
- [E. A. Milne](/source/E._A._Milne), 1952. *Modern Cosmology and the Christian Idea of God*. Oxford Univ. Press.
- [Arthur Peacocke](/source/Arthur_Peacocke), 1979. *Creation and the World of Science*.
- [John Polkinghorne](/source/John_Polkinghorne), 1994. *The Faith of a Physicist*. Princeton Univ. Press.
- ---------, 1998. *[Science and Theology](/source/Science_and_Theology)*. ISBN 0-281-05176-3.
- ---------, 2000. *[Faith, Science and Understanding](/source/Faith,_Science_and_Understanding)*. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-08372-6; ISBN 978-0-300-09128-1.
- [Lawrence Poole], 2003, "SELF-Empowerment", ISBN 2-922417-45-X, IQ Press.
- Saunders, Nicholas, 2002. *[Divine Action and Modern Science](/source/Divine_Action_and_Modern_Science)*. Cambridge Univ. Press.
- [Russell Stannard](/source/Russell_Stannard), 1999. *The God Experiment*. Faber. The 1987–88 Gifford lectures.
- [Richard Swinburne](/source/Richard_Swinburne), 2004 (1979). *The Existence of God*.
- [Frank J. Tipler](/source/Frank_J._Tipler), 1994. *The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead*. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0385467995.
- --------, 2007. *The Physics of Christianity*. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-51424-7. [Chapter I and excerpt from Chapter II.](http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385514248&view=excerpt) Chapter I also available [here.](http://www.math.tulane.edu/~tipler/Chapter_1._Introduction.doc)
- [Charles Hard Townes](/source/Charles_Hard_Townes), 1966, "[The Convergence of Science and Religion](http://www.templetonprize.org/pdfs/THINK.pdf)," *Think*.
- Simon Sam Gutierrez, 1991, The Solomon Formula insaecula saeculorum: A Theophysical Find, [TXu000559229](http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=3&ti=1,3&Search_Arg=solomon%20formula&Search_Code=TALL&CNT=25&PID=712KLRRWTnu_xiUouaO1i-Drjg&SEQ=20140303091243&SID=6)

## External links

- [Theophysics](http://theophysics.chimehost.net/). A website mainly about Tipler's [Omega Point Theory](/source/Frank_J._Tipler#The_Omega_Point), with links to short nontechnical articles mostly by Tipler, but also some by Deutsch and Pannenberg.
- [entertheophysics](http://www.consult-iidc.com/english/science/entertheophysics.htm), A website containing the 12 principles of Theophysics as explained by the author, training consultant and conference speaker Lawrence Poole. Poole also relates several applications of Theophysics including a "unified field formula".

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