Lately I have been involved in a fascinating discussion among some of my fellow Stoic practitioners, focused on whether the ancient Stoic conception of “god” is tenable in the light of modern science. Brittany Polat got things rolling with an excellent essay arguing that modern Stoics cannot endorse, and do not need, the original notion of god as articulated by Zeno, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Kai Whiting disagreed, and articulated why he thinks there is no contradiction between that aspect of ancient Stoic metaphysics and modern science. I then chimed in with a response to Kai, written from the point of view of a philosopher who is also a scientist (as well as a practicing Stoic), and can therefore offer a rather unusual perspective on the matter. Finally, James Daltrey responded to my contribution, with a detailed analysis of the issue and a clearly articulated position whereby there is no contradiction between Stoic theology and the modern scientific outlook.

Here I will endeavor to clarify what Daltrey gets right and where I think he goes off the mark, but first an obvious question: why should we care?

The answer is that Stoics believe that in order to live a good human life (which they derive from their ethics), we need to have a decent grasp of how the world works (what they termed “physics,” but what we would now consider a combination of natural science and metaphysics), and that, in turn, we ought to use our capacity for reason as well as we can to arrive at our conclusions ( “logic,” which is broadly construed as anything that improves good human reasoning). Taken at face value, it would then seem like Polat and I, in questioning certain aspects of Stoic metaphysics, are arguing for the overthrowing of the Stoic system, if one believes that their metaphysics are inextricably connected to their ethics. But, contra Daltrey, I believe that the relationship among the three fields of inquiry is not rigid at all. After all, one does not have to buy into every detail of Stoic logic, say, in order to practice their ethics. For instance, do we still believe that the sage—the most excellent human being possible—arrives at true knowledge, as they argued, or only at well-founded opinions, as their Skeptic critics maintained?

Moreover, nobody really accepts the entirety of Stoic physics, nowadays. For instance, we moderns reject the notion of divination, which the ancient Stoics thought was a kind of natural science of the cosmos. Also, nobody who is scientifically informed thinks that the universe exists in an endless cycle of death and rebirth that repeats exactly, forever. And so on. So, the real question isn’t whether questioning aspects of Stoic physics or logic (or even ethics, for that matter) means abandoning Stoicism. The question is how much and specifically what one can reasonably reject without creating unresolvable incoherencies within the Stoic system. So let’s get to work.

First, I agree with a great deal of what Daltrey wrote. I am fairly confident that we have the same general understanding of Stoic physics, what the Stoics meant by “god,” and so forth. To briefly recap: the Stoics were materialists and believed in universal cause and effect (which means they were also determinists). They were pantheists, i.e., they thought that god is inherent in the world (not outside of it, like the Christian one), and in fact coincides with the world itself, imagined as a living organism endowed with perfect rationality (the Logos).

The reason this has practical consequences for their ethics is that they derived a sense of benevolent Providence from this picture. Again, this is different from the Christian take: for the Stoics humans (as well as everything else in the universe) are literally organs of the cosmic body, so whatever happens to us—even things we don’t particularly relish, like pain and death—is for the good of the cosmos. For some, this provides a type of meaningful consolation. Not in the sense that we will be rewarded by god in the afterlife (and be reunited with our loves ones, for example) but because we are able to recognize that what happens to us has purpose at a cosmic level. This is why Epictetus says (in Discourses II.6.9-10), that we are like the foot that has to step into the mud in order for the body to get home: the foot isn’t going to like it, if it considers the action of stepping in the mud in isolation. But if it realizes that it is the only way to get the body home, it will gladly do its job, no matter how unpleasant it may be.

And now for the bits where I disagree with Daltrey, after which I will conclude by addressing why I don’t think that doing away with Stoic theology is going to imperil Stoic ethics.

The first place where I begin to be skeptical of Daltrey’s views is when he talks about monism and holism, two big and highly controversial terms in the history of philosophy. He correctly says that “[For the Stoics] reality is one unitary organic whole with no independent parts, made of one ultimate substance, and wherein all phenomena are reducible to a single principle.” This is a type of monism, the notion that everything is made—at bottom—of one type of “stuff.” What “stuff”? Whatever contemporary physics says it is, whether quarks, strings, fields, or what not. And yes, this is in agreement with modern science.

But then there is the bit about holism: “Holism is another way of describing this picture. The Stoic view of the universe expresses a strong monism or holism. Holism, simply stated, is a theory that the universe and especially living nature is correctly seen in terms of interacting wholes (as of living organisms) that are more than the mere sum of elementary particles.” To begin with, holism is most definitely not a synonym of monism, since one can accept the latter and reject the former, or vice versa. And various philosophers have defended pretty much all the available combinations and their variants.

Second, it isn’t clear what Daltrey means by “more than the mere sum of elementary particles,” and whether that’s what the Stoics intended (obviously, they were not thinking in terms of particles!). If he is simply invoking what is sometimes termed “interactionism,” i.e., the notion that causes interact in non-linear ways to produce effects (and therefore the effects are literally not just “the sum” of their causes), then we agree. But that’s really irrelevant to the question at hand, since causes, linear or not, do not amount to a rational and providential god. So why does he bring this up?

I believe Daltrey does so because “this holistic/organismic perspective is particularly interesting when looking at highly interactive complex systems that involve self-organization where complexity arises spontaneously from simple elements. Evolution, neuroscience, human societies, and eco-systems are each examples of such systems.” However, notice that he has now slipped the word “organismic” into his discourse, without giving any particular reason for doing so. Highly interactive complex systems include, for instance, hurricanes, or indeed weather patterns in general. But no serious scientist would refer to those systems as “organic,” which is a term usually reserved for living organisms.

Also, to put together “evolution [a process, not a system], neuroscience [a discipline, not a system], human societies, and ecosystems” into the same bucket is misleading. Yes, these are all examples of complex dynamic systems, or processes that lead to such systems, or disciplines that study such systems. But they are also very different from each other, which is one reason why they are the province of largely separate scientific disciplines, respectively: evolutionary biology, neuroscience, social sciences, and ecology. It is tempting, and indeed interesting, to draw parallels here, so long as we keep firmly in mind that the differences are just as important as the similarities.

Where Daltrey and I really diverge is when he begins to talk about the living cosmos: “From the perspective of self-organization, holism, and monism, the Stoics’ talk of the Cosmos as a living being makes sense in the terms of modern science. The Stoics do not make a dualistic distinction between what makes something alive or dead, or between rocks, plants, and animals, and humans. . . . In a sense, everything is alive. Humans are just minerals and water, particularly arranged in a way to make us what we are.”

Well, many scientists and philosophers would disagree with this statement, because in no meaningful sense does the word “alive” refer to everything. First off, modern science—which does make distinctions between things that are alive and things that are not, as well as between things that have consciousness and things that don’t—is not dualist. There is no contradiction at all between stating that everything is made of one fundamental kind of stuff, and yet that there are qualitative differences in the way various systems behave.

Take a simple example: water. “Wetness” is a property of H2O molecules, under certain combinations of pressure and temperature. But no single molecule of water is ever “wet.” Wetness is an emergent property that sufficiently large quantities of molecules acquire when exposed to a given range of environmental conditions. There is no magic or dualism at play. Similarly, one can say that there are qualitative distinctions between rocks and human beings (only the second are alive and conscious) without thereby having to be accused of being a dualist.

Daltrey then quotes three authorities in support of his position. Let’s take a careful look.

Stoic scholar John Sellars, Daltrey reminds us, wrote that “the [Stoic] idea is that life on earth is best understood as a single living system, including not just obviously organic matter but also inorganic things like rocks and the atmosphere.” Sellars is right about what the ancient Stoics thought. But the fact is that from a modern scientific perspective life on earth is not a single living system, what in modern parlance is sometimes referred to as the “Gaia hypothesis.” It is certainly true that life cannot be studied in isolation from its environment, including all the inorganic components. But that doesn’t mean that geologists and biologists aren’t legitimately focused on different aspects of the system, specifically, the non-living vs the living parts, each field of research using the other as background information.

Daltrey then provides us with a quote from NASA astrobiologist David Grinspoon: “If the universe tends toward self-organization, and the epitome of self-organization is life, then rather than some accidental occurrence here on an unusual ball of rock, life may be implicit in the laws of nature, a stage of organization that this universe goes through on its journey from atoms to minds.” Let’s set aside the fact that astrobiology is still a proto-scientific discipline, a field of research with exactly zero data points (so far) to build on. And that therefore one should take the pronouncements of astrobiologists with a fairly sizable grain of salt.

What Grinspoon is saying is either trivial or seriously mistaken. If all he is arguing for is that life is “implicit” in the laws of nature in the sense that the biological world is no exception to the broader physical world, of course that’s (trivially) true. But he seems to me to be saying more, invoking some sort of teleological principle (a “journey from atoms to minds”), according to which the universe goes through “stages” of evolution that are somehow going in the particular direction of consciousness. But teleology went out the window in science since the time of Galileo, and it really doesn’t help to try to bring it back. The universe “evolves” only in the sense that it changes over time. There is no goal, no final end, no necessary change of any kind. Stuff just happens, in accordance to cause and effect. That’s it.

The third quote Daltrey provides is from Cicero’s The Nature of the Gods, where the author explains Stoic theology: “Nothing, says [Zeno], that is destitute itself of life and reason can generate a being possessed of life and reason; but the world does generate beings possessed of life and reason; the world, therefore, is not itself destitute of life and reason.” Again, this is either trivial or a spectacular example of the fallacy of composition, that is, inferring that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole. Stoic scholar William Stephens points out that Marcus Aurelius also commits the same mistake, and under similar circumstances.

Daltrey continues by considering the rationality (not just aliveness) of the cosmos: “This internal law is the famous Stoic Logos, which is not a mysterious force that permeates the universe but simply the idea that the Cosmos is both rationally organized and that as rational, intelligent beings, we can understand how it functions.” Once again, this is obviously true. If the cosmos were not intelligible, we wouldn’t have science. We have science, therefore the universe is intelligible.

Daltrey’s use of the term “rational” in this context introduces an unwelcome ambiguity: it isn’t the universe as a living organism that is rational, it is simply that the laws of nature can be understood by rational agents like us. We don’t know why this is, by the way, as modern physics hasn’t gotten there yet. And perhaps it never will. Regardless, to say that the laws of nature can be understood rationally just means that things don’t happen at random, without cause. That is true, but it doesn’t purchase any special meaning of rationality as far as the cosmos at large is concerned, which is what Stoic theology needs.

Daltrey quotes Anthony Long and David Sedley in this context: “In Stoicism, the logos is understood to be the perfectly rational benevolent Nature of the universe that connects everything in its causal nexus. The universe is considered the highest expression of rationality because of its order, structure, and wholeness.” Long and Sedley are right, and that summary nicely captures one of my objections: there is no “benevolence” in the universe, because you don’t get benevolence (a human value judgment, which implies intentionality) from a web of cause and effect. You just get causes and effects.

Which brings us to the next level of Daltrey’s analysis: providence. He helpfully distinguishes two notions of Providence: “General Providence: God’s continuous upholding of the natural order of the Universe. Special Providence: God’s extraordinary intervention in the life of people.” He correctly rejects the second one within the Stoic context, attributing it instead to the Abrahamic religions.

But why do we need to buy into the first notion of Providence? He says that’s because “it is not that the Cosmos has been planned out in advance, but what will happen next can be known from what is happening now.” Sure, but now we are just playing with words: the laws of nature, and particularly universal cause-effect, will make sure that “what happens next can be known only from what is happening now.” What need is there to invoke loaded terms like “god,” “rationality,” “living,” “providence,” and “benevolence”? It seems like Daltrey is bent on reconciling Stoic theology with modern science at all costs, and the cost apparently is that of expanding the meaning of otherwise perfectly clear words and distort them beyond recognition.

Another example of this kind of word game comes a bit later, when Daltrey elaborates on his notion of benevolence: “We have food that comes out of the ground, water that comes from the sky, the brains to understand what is going on, hands to make tools, material from which to make houses out. We have each other. We can communicate with one another, love one another, aid one another. This state of affairs is undoubtedly ‘good’ in an efficient, practical sense.” Yes, we do. As a result of mindless (not Logos-infused) processes like Darwinian natural selection. But the same processes also give us cancer, predatory animals, deadly viruses and bacteria, earthquakes, tsunamis, and so forth. On balance, this mix of welcome and unwelcome stuff is exactly what we expect from a mindless universe that is morally neutral, not from a benevolent one.

In fact, Daltrey gives the game away a couple of lines later, where he admits: “with a new understanding of our terms, Nature providentially sustains us.” Sure, if we get to redefine terms at our convenience then the whole thing makes sense. He adds: “The Stoics accepted sickness and calamity as part of the unavoidable regular workings of the Cosmos. Nature cannot violate the laws of Nature.” Correct, and I have no problem with that notion of acceptance, for precisely that reason. But the Stoics didn’t just accept whatever happens, they told us that we should embrace it, because it is the result of a rational, benevolent providence. It’s not, and that part of Stoic metaphysics has to go.

Along the same lines: “If you get sick, the solution is to understand that the Cosmos is not malign and ‘curse the gods,’ but to do your best in dealing with it and do what you can to help others with good grace.” Indeed! But “not malign” is not at all the same as “benign”!

Finally, let me get back to the whole reason why we are having this discussion in the first place. Daltrey does not mince words: “it is hard to see how one would get to the fundamental tenets of Stoic ethics without this view of Cosmic order.” It is not, actually, that hard. That has been the whole project behind the most comprehensive attempt so far at modernizing Stoic philosophy, Larry Becker’s A New Stoicism (chapter-by-chapter commentary here).

Daltrey unequivocally endorses a rigid connection among the fields of Stoic ethics, physics, and logic. But no such rigidity exists, even according to the ancient Stoics themselves, who disagreed about various aspects of their logic, physics, and ethics (see book VII of Diogenes Laertius’ Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers for several examples, especially sections 160–167).

Marcus Aurelius himself contemplated the possibility that the Stoics may have gotten parts of their metaphysics wrong, and that perhaps the rival Epicureans were closer to the mark:

Either there is a fatal necessity and invincible order, or a kind Providence, or a confusion without a purpose and without a director. If then there is an invincible necessity, why do you resist? But if there is a Providence that allows itself to be propitiated, make yourself worthy of the help of the divinity. But if there is a confusion without a governor, be content that in such a tempest you have yourself a certain ruling intelligence. (Meditations XII.14, several more quotes along these lines can be found here.)

Marcus was not thereby agnostic on this matter, he did accept the Stoic system as a whole. And Daltrey is certainly right that he didn’t provide us with a complete reconstruction of Stoic ethics along new lines. Then again, that’s not really the job of a personal philosophical diary like Marcus’s Meditations! That’s where Becker, Don Robertson, Bill Irvine, myself and others come in: to keep Stoicism a living (ah!), evolving (!) philosophy, not a set of fixed scriptures to be preserved for eternity.

Daltrey tells us that “the most persuasive argument to continue using the word [god] is that the ancient Stoic writings are replete with references to God, and we cannot erase the word from their texts.” That is entirely unpersuasive. It would be like arguing that because the Old Testament contains plenty of passages endorsing genocide, war, and rape, we should not do something about them. No, we should not “erase” those references from the original texts. But we should feel free to ignore them (even, when need be, condemn them) and to rethink the underlying system accordingly, to update it to the 21st century and beyond, to keep it relevant to current and future generations. Just like Seneca said:

Will I not walk in the footsteps of my predecessors? I will indeed use the ancient road—but if I find another route that is more direct and has fewer ups and downs, I will stake out that one. Those who advanced these doctrines before us are not our masters but our guides. The truth lies open to all; it has not yet been taken over. Much is left also for those yet to come.’ (Letters to Lucilius, XXXIII.11)