KOZMIK ANARCHY

The following passage from Peter Kropotkin's essay "Anarchism: its Philosophy and Ideal", published in San Francisco by Free Society, 1898, is, to my mind, one of his greatest insights (note the date he wrote this):

"As to the harmony that the human mind discovers in Nature, and which harmony is, on the whole, but the verification of a certain stability of phenomena, the modern man of science no doubt recognizes it more than ever. But he no longer tries to explain it by the action of laws conceived according to a certain plan preestablished by an intelligent will.

What used to be called "natural law" is nothing but a certain relation among phenomena which we dimly see, and each "law" takes a temporary character of causality; that is to say: If such a phenomenon is produced under such conditions, such another phenomenon will follow. No law placed outside the phenomena: each phenomenon governs that which follows it-not law.

Nothing preconceived in what we call harmony in Nature. The chance of collisions and encounters has sufficed to establish it. Such a phenomenon will last for centuries because the adaption, the equilibrium it represents has taken centuries to be established; while such another will last but an instant if that form of momentary equilibrium was born in an instant. If the planets of our solar system do not collide with one another and do not destroy one another every day, if they last millions of years, it is because they represent an equilibrium that has taken millions of centuries to establish as a resultant of millions of blind forces. If continents are not continually destroyed by volcanic shocks, it is because they have taken thousands and thousands of centuries to build up, molecule by molecule, and to take their present shape. But lightning will only last an instant; because it represents a momentary rupture of the equilibrium, a sudden redistribution of force."

Anarchy, as Hakim Bey has said, is an ontological principle. Anarchy is not merely socio-economic-political. The political ramifications are only a very small subset of a cosmic truth. The Anarchist is the person who can "go with the flow" of cosmic, ontological Anarchy.

How can we reconcile what Kropotkin wrote in the passage quoted above with intelligent design? The passage seems to speak of purely random configurations.

First, we should mention that absolute randomness clearly does not reign. There is a tendency to agglomerate and configure built into the universe.

Most think of ID as meaning that *one* plan has been put into effect by a super-intelligence and that that one plan is being played out in strict observance of the master plan, detail-by-detail.

At least in the Jewish tradition, the only tradition that I feel it is my place to represent; that is not the meaning of intelligent design.

"God was angered at the trees in the Garden of Eden because He* commanded them to be fruit trees, but they took it upon themselves to grow as fruit-bearing trees.
*[I use the gender-neutral pronouns 'It' and 'That' to designate God, but I was quoting the midrash (homily).]

The Rabbis explain that it was God's intention that the whole tree be the edible fruit, not just the fruity things on the branches.

My attitude to this was: "yeah, right". That's because I didn't begin to understand what the midrash was saying.

Then came along a Rabbi and explained the meaning of the midrash, much to my edification and embarrassment at my arrogance and ignorance.

He explained: The midrash speaks of cause and effect. The early stages of creation allowed for the possibility of a world in which there was no cause and effect. Cause and effect are not necessary developments or characteristics of the world. They could have been one and the same. There need not have been any separation or delay between a cause and its effect/s, or for that matter, the inverse, any given effect/s and its/their causes. There could have been a world of maximal what we call today "entanglement". Time, forces, differentiation and discrete bodies could either not have formed at all, or formed in different configurations that would not have allowed for cause and effect. There could have been, therefore, a world in which laboriousness and enslavement were impossible. God was angered because the universe developed cause and effect and it did, thus creating the conditions wherein beings could be enslaved.

Creation, we learn from this midrash, was granted a goodly measure of independence and the ability to determine the forms it would take. It took on configurations that would allow for cause and effect, to wit: time, forces, differentiation and discrete entities as we know them.

At the time that the midrash was articulated, the terms 'cause', 'effect', 'differentiation', and 'entanglement', all of those terms I can now employ to make this matter sound rational to those who have to have matters that are super-rational translated to them into rational terms, had not yet been coined.

The Rabbis were able to understand the principles and the phenomena in and of themselves, but they did not yet have the terminology to express it in the way that is accepted nowadays as "rational".

They had presaged what physics is working on by over 2000 years, but they didn't speak like physicists.

So, they explained the matter homiletically, allegorically."

To complete the demonstration that "randomness" and ID do not contradict and strengthen the concept that nature itself is free to determine itself (within limits); I'll herein quote Tractate AVOT, or PIRKEI AVOT usually translated, inaccurately, as "Wisdom of the Fathers", Chapter III, Verse 15:

"Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is granted; the world is judged with goodness, and everything according to the preponderance of deeds."

This is a remarkable passage. It means that while God knows what will occur, that which will occur is not predetermined. Freedom is built into the system and nature itself if free to form "randomly". The possibility of goodness and otherwise too is built into nature itself and nature is free to take on configurations that will be propitious or not.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com