Key Arguments

• Arendt argues that creation processes require understanding and imitating a transmundane ‘universal’ force from the same location.
• Only the assumed extra-earthly location enables production of processes absent from earthly, stable matter yet decisive for matter’s coming-into-being.
• Therefore, astrophysics, not geophysics, could reach the ‘last secrets’ of earth and nature.
• From the universe’s viewpoint, earth is a special case and matter/energy are different forms of the same substance.

Source Quotes

This thought strikes us as blasphemous, and though it is blasphemous in every traditional Western or Eastern philosophic or theological frame of reference, it is no more blasphemous than what we have been doing and what we are aspiring to do. The thought loses its blasphemous character, however, as soon as we understand what Archimedes understood so well, even though he did not know how to reach his point outside the earth, namely, that no matter how we explain the evolution of the earth and nature and man, they must have come into being by some transmundane, “universal” force, whose work must be comprehensible to the point of imitation by somebody who is able to occupy the same location. It is ultimately nothing but this assumed location in the universe outside the earth that enables us to produce processes which do not occur on the earth and play no role in stable matter but are decisive for the coming into being of matter.

The thought loses its blasphemous character, however, as soon as we understand what Archimedes understood so well, even though he did not know how to reach his point outside the earth, namely, that no matter how we explain the evolution of the earth and nature and man, they must have come into being by some transmundane, “universal” force, whose work must be comprehensible to the point of imitation by somebody who is able to occupy the same location. It is ultimately nothing but this assumed location in the universe outside the earth that enables us to produce processes which do not occur on the earth and play no role in stable matter but are decisive for the coming into being of matter. It is indeed in the very nature of the thing that astrophysics and not geophysics, that “universal” science and not “natural” science, should have been able to penetrate the last secrets of the earth and of nature.

It is ultimately nothing but this assumed location in the universe outside the earth that enables us to produce processes which do not occur on the earth and play no role in stable matter but are decisive for the coming into being of matter. It is indeed in the very nature of the thing that astrophysics and not geophysics, that “universal” science and not “natural” science, should have been able to penetrate the last secrets of the earth and of nature. From the viewpoint of the universe, the earth is but a special case and can be understood as such, just as in this view there cannot be a decisive distinction between matter and energy, both being “only different forms of the selfsame basic substance.”

It is indeed in the very nature of the thing that astrophysics and not geophysics, that “universal” science and not “natural” science, should have been able to penetrate the last secrets of the earth and of nature. From the viewpoint of the universe, the earth is but a special case and can be understood as such, just as in this view there cannot be a decisive distinction between matter and energy, both being “only different forms of the selfsame basic substance.” With Galileo already, certainly since Newton, the word “universal” has begun to acquire a very specific meaning indeed; it means “valid beyond our solar system.”

Key Concepts

• some transmundane, “universal” force, whose work must be comprehensible to the point of imitation by somebody who is able to occupy the same location
• this assumed location in the universe outside the earth that enables us to produce processes which do not occur on the earth and play no role in stable matter but are decisive for the coming into being of matter
• astrophysics and not geophysics, that “universal” science and not “natural” science, should have been able to penetrate the last secrets of the earth and of nature
• From the viewpoint of the universe, the earth is but a special case
• there cannot be a decisive distinction between matter and energy, both being “only different forms of the selfsame basic substance.”

Context

Section 37; causal explanation of why universal science discloses earth’s ‘last secrets.’