Roland Cazalis

La cosmologie organique de Whitehead entend restaurer l’unité du monde. Chaque entité actuelle est marquée par une créativité orientée qui se manifeste par un devenir ou concrescence vers la « satisfaction ». Dans le cadre des sociétés humaines, le processus de concrescence dépend de médiations telles que la figure du processus d’individuation suivant trois grandes voies d’intensification. L’approche esthétique de l’oeuvre de Whitehead suggère une voie d’intensification structurée par la triade « Adventure », « Beauty » et « Peace ». L’approximation de la propre trajectoire de Whitehead laisse entrevoir un mystique dont le processus d’individuation et la connaissance de la nature convergent vers une expérience du sublime qu’il nomme « Peace ».

Le « panenthéisme ouvert » ou « panenthéisme émergentiste » est un modèle théologique issu du dialogue interdisciplinaire permettant d’appréhender l’action de Dieu dans le monde. Il allie des éléments du panenthéisme de l’idéalisme allemand, notamment de Schelling et Hegel, ceux du process théisme revu par Charles Hartshorne, et des éléments essentiels du théisme « ouvert ». À cette base est ajoutée la théorie de l’émergence forte qui apporte une vision moniste du monde. Le modèle lui permet de discuter de l’influence divine dans le monde en termes de causalité descendante. Néanmoins, l’idée d’émergence dans sa version contemporaine demeure complexe et sujette à controverses. La théorie des catégories, en tant que théorie des universels concrets, permet de donner un fondement ou un cadre à l’idée d’émergence par le biais des propriétés de la colimite. Les catégories permettent également d’évoquer la notion whiteheadienne de créativité en la présentant sous le jour d’une théorie des figures premières de la créativité.

There is no doubt that the publication of Origin of Species began a new era in thinking about the origins of mankind. The book found a readership that had been waiting for it for some time and many had already developed their own ideas on the subject. In Darwin's book, many readers recognized their own ideas, or their fears, even if they did not always grasp the onginality of Darwin's proposals. Origin of Species came out amidst a certain fever, provoked by Wallace's letter. The rushed synthesis of the opera magna that Darwin had planned, containing analogies that were not always adequate, with his sequencing of the mechanisms implicated in the generation of species that did not respect their chronological order, certainly did not help the understanding of this new theory. Origin of Species had the effect of Pandora's Box, giving use to different interpretations. Darwinism as a theory of descent by modifications seems simply to indicate that variations are produced in the living world on which natural selection acts. Whereas the latter is presented as a principle of conservation, the principle of creation is variations, without which natural selection remains powerless. Origin of Species is not like one of Newton's laws applying to the evolution of the living world. The reading of this work will thus appear a frustrating experience, if the reader finds answers which are not within the scope of the book. The title promises much but the contents are less generous, in particular on the origin of variations. In addition, Darwin remains rather quiet on certain consequences of his proposals, as if inviting the reader to go further. On the other hand, the work generates a model that helps understanding. Origin of species indeed opens up a new space of understanding which makes it possible for natural history to become an applied science, therefore a space able to generate explanatory mechanisms instead of sticking to descriptions. For that, and beyond, being a naturalist, Darwin must be considered to have put forward a pedagogical principle which stipulates that any space of understanding must be a matrix able to evolve and, in particular, able to assimilate what comes outside in a creative way. Thus, before thinking of interactions between science and religion and more precisely, between science and theology in connection with the theory of evolution, it is critical that the field of understanding of each realm be equipped with an evolutionary capability, an aptitude which should not be compelled. Darwin, for example, invites us to seek the laws which produce and govern the appearance of variations. Biological sciences must thus work to elucidate this question, but with a mind set free from certain orthodox tenets which delay the progress of scientific knowledge. In the same way, and in the framework of religion, the understanding of a religions own body of doctrines is destined to evolve, because the course history does not stop. Thus, it appears that being a true matrix - a quality that each realm grants or does not grant to its understanding space - determines the aptitude to incorporate foreign elements without being poisoned. In this paradigm, the relationship between the realms of science and theology is not basically different from that existing between strains of micro-organisms in a given biotope. This relation can vary from neutrality, safeguarding of territory by antibiotic release, up to various types of symbiosis. Thus, the real or phantasmatic toxicity of a type of Darwinism with regard to the religious approach to the living world history qualifies above all the type of metabolism of each realm.