This article is published as an addition to issue 2 of The Side View Journal. The article continues an ongoing dialogue initiated by Brittany Polat, and continued by Kai Whiting and Massimo Pigliucci. 

In a recent article in The Side View, entitled “The Stoic God Is Untenable in the Light of Modern Science,” philosopher Massimo Pigliucci suggests that the Stoic God represents a view of the world that is incompatible with scientific thinking. The key points are that the Stoic god is not only not compatible with science, but also are not essential to Stoic philosophy, and is replaceable by the term Nature.

To see if there is a contradiction between science and the Stoic god, we need to understand how the Stoics understood their concept of God, then compare it to the principle tenets of modern science, to see if there are any irreconcilable conceptual contradictions. In this article, we will see that with a closer understanding of the subject, the Stoic God sits perfectly well within a scientific worldview.

To do so, we first need to clarify some of the key terms used by the ancient Greek and Roman Stoics—namely, Nature, Cosmos, and God. Beyond the specialist vocabulary they used, we need to understand the theoretical underpinning of Stoic thinking, including their idea of a natural order to the world and a physicalist understanding of causality, all contained within a holistic concept of the interconnectedness of the processes that form all things.

To be sure, some of the ideas that come out of Stoic philosophy may appear unusual to modern minds and could seem contrary to scientific thinking; however, once the core concepts are understood, I will argue they can be readily understood in scientific terms. The Stoics referred to the universe as the Cosmos, which they held to be not only alive but also rational, providential, and benevolent.

When we understand that the Stoics used the words Nature and God interchangeably, we must consider that, against our background of Christian or post-Christian culture, we have different ideas of what these words mean. To unpack these terms, I will unpack what Stoics mean by Nature, Cosmos, and God, and also related concepts like Logos and Providence.

Nature and Phusis

When we see the word Nature in Stoic texts, we must first understand that they do not mean Nature as in forests, wildlife, and oceans. The Greek word for Nature is Phusis, the root of our modern word physics. It means growth, flourishing, development, literally like a plant, or a child. Natura is the Latin translation of phusis, from which we get Nature. As Pierre Hadot, a French intellectual who helped launch the rebirth of Stoicism in the twentieth century, explains

“Since the time of Thales of Miletus, an increasingly precise mode of thought had developed around what the Greeks called phusis that is, the phenomenon of the growth of living beings and of man, but also of the universe”[1]

Thus Phusis is a lot broader than our word physics. It includes physics but also biology, psychology, and sociology. Nature–Phusis for the Stoics is the way things are, how it all works, the natural order of things.^[2]

When we see the fundamental Stoic tenet telling us that the good life is “life in harmony with nature,” this is what they are pointing at, and this is the foundation of their ethical theory.

As we shall see, the study of Phusis, Nature, is also the study of the Stoic god.

Cosmos and Pantheism

The world as a whole, the universe, is called by the Stoics Cosmos, which in itself means order. The relationship of God to Cosmos is made clear by Diogenes Laertius, one of our most important sources on the ancient Stoics.

The term universe or Cosmos is used by them [The Stoics] in three senses : (1) of God himself, the individual being whose quality is derived from the whole of substance; he is indestructible and ingenerable, being the artificer of this orderly arrangement, who at stated periods of time absorbs into himself the whole of substance and again creates it from himself. (2) Again, they give the name of cosmos to the orderly arrangement of the heavenly bodies in Itself as such; and (3) in the third-place to that whole of which these two are parts.[3]

We can summarise this as follows: (1) God/Nature/Cosmos are the same thing, the sum of all there is. (2) God/Nature/Cosmos is the single substance which forms all there is. (3) God/Nature/Cosmos is the organization of the substance of himself.

The identification of the universe with God is a form of pantheism, from the Greek Pan (all) Theos (God): God as the forces and laws of the universe.[4] In the case of the Stoics, God is both the physical universe and the forces and laws of the universe.

Physicalism and Causality

It is essential that we note the use of the word substance in the account by Laertius above. When the Stoics identify God with the Cosmos, they mean precisely the physical universe.

“The Stoics are corporealists, as we may put it. This means, in brief, that according to the Stoics god and matter, the world, and all compounds that are parts of the world are bodies; that only bodies exist; and that only bodies have the power to act and be acted upon.”[5]

The Stoic God himself is physical, and as the physical Cosmos, is entirely bound by the laws of cause and effect. The Stoic God is not a supernatural being capable of miraculously suspending the laws of nature.

We can here refer to Pigliucci himself for confirmation of this:

“The Stoics still got quite a bit right in metaphysics, particularly the notions of universal cause-effect and the resulting corollary of determinism . . . [thoughts of mysticism] don’t really mesh well with a thoroughly materialistic and deterministic philosophy like Stoicism.”^[6]

Materialist, or physicalist, determinism keeps us well within the bounds of modern scientific thinking, locking out any possibility of divine intervention. In philosophical terms, this is a “no miracles argument,” a core requirement of scientific realism.

Monism and Holism

If we look further into the naturalistic physics of the Stoics, Diogenes Laertius’ three points above indicate what is known as the monism of the Stoic theory. 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.[7] This is a surprisingly modern idea that maps onto 21st^-century views of the natural sciences.[8]

To elaborate: (1) Everything solid, liquid, or gaseous is made of atoms. (2) Atoms arise from subatomic particles. (3) Subatomic particles are interacting electromagnetic waves. (4) Light, radio waves, and cosmic radiation are all electromagnetic waves. (5) There is an underlying background field from which these waves arise.

Everything there is, from microwaves to mice, to men, to mountains, to the Milky Way, arises from this one single principle. Everything is made of one thing, differently arranged at different scales, together making up a single system.

The processes at the smaller levels are the same as the processes at work at the higher the levels. Given the strictly causal nature of the Cosmos, all the parts are physically connected, either by direct contact or by electromagnetic forces.[9]

We can call this a “cosmic web of cause and effect,” a nexus, a network. The Stoics called it God, Nature, or Cosmos. The idea is one of harmonious interdependent processes. Marcus Aurelius is poetic in describing this phenomenon:

“Keep reminding yourself of the way things are connected, of their relatedness. All things are implicated in one another and in sympathy with each other. This event is the consequence of some other one. Things push and pull on each other, and breathe together, and are one.” (Meditations 6.38)

And here we see a very similar image from the modern physicist Carlo Rovelli:

We are nodes in a network of exchanges through which we pass images, tools, information, and knowledge. But we are also an integral part of the world which we perceive; we are not external observers. We are situated within it. Our view of it is from within its midst. We are made up of the same atoms and the same light signals as are exchanged between pine trees in the mountains and stars in the galaxies.[10]

Holism is another way of describing this picture. The Stoic view of the universe expresses a strong monism or holism.[11] 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.”[12]

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.[13]

A 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.[14]

The Stoics do not make a dualistic distinction between what makes something alive or dead, or between rocks, plants, and animals, and humans. From their perspective, all things are organized with varying degrees of complexity.[15] All things that we call “living things” are made of things we call “non-living things.” In a sense, everything is alive.[16] Humans are just minerals and water, particularly arranged in a way to make us what we are.

However, we do not need to imagine that the Stoics were considering the Cosmos as anything like a wild beast. John Sellars, a noted contemporary scholar of Stoicism, says:

The 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. It is a mistake to try to understand organisms like plants and animals in isolation.[17]

David Grinspoon, a NASA astrobiologist, puts it more technically:

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.[18]

Everything is animate; everything is dynamic and energetic, from quantum fields to galaxies. From this point of view, the founder of the Stoic school, Zeno of Citium’s rather strange-sounding argument makes sense.

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.[19] Cicero on the Nature of the Gods (II.8)

The Cosmos generates life, actively and naturally. This is what Stoics mean when they say the Cosmos is alive, but they also believe it to be not just living, but rational. I turn next to this understanding.

A Rational Cosmos

We do not have to commit to the Cosmos ‘making decisions’ in a sense we do, and that is not the claim that the Stoics make. Hadot explains:

“The fact that the world is rational does not mean that it is the result of the deliberation, choice, or calculation of some craftsman exterior to his work. Rather, it means that the world possesses its own internal law.”[20]

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. It is the principle of intelligibility in the universe that permeates humans and cosmos alike.[21]

This theme is familiar in the writings of Marcus Aurelius:

Everything is interwoven, and the web is holy; none of its parts are unconnected. They are composed harmoniously, and together they compose the world. One world made up of all things. One divinity present in them all. One substance and one law—the logos that all rational beings share. And one truth. . . . If this is indeed the culmination of one process, beings who share the same birth, the same logos. (Meditations 7.9)

Massimo Pigliucci explains further in his own words:

[the universe] is organized according to rational principles, the Logos. This can be interpreted as God (for instance in Epictetus), but also simply as the idea that Nature is understandable by way of rationality (which is why we can scientifically investigate it).^[22]

Logos is seen in the correlation between the structure of the cosmos and the structure of our brains, of our minds, of our perceptions, which makes reasoning and knowledge possible. It is the principle of intelligibility in the universe.[23] As Anthony Long and David Sedley explain,

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.[24]

But if the world is rational, is it also provident?

Providence and Predictability

Providence is another word that gets confused with Christian use of terms. It is helpful to understand that Christians have two ideas 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. [25]

The first maps onto Stoic providence while the second has no place at all in the Stoic worldview. As discussed above, there is no space within the idea of Cosmos for the laws of nature to be broken. Nature cannot break the laws of nature. Looking at the word providence itself makes the Stoic understanding clearer: The Latin word providentia means foresight, precaution, foreknowledge.^[26] The Greek word pronoia, of which providence is a translation, means the same.[27] 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. As Marcus Aurelius explains,

That follows coheres with what went before. Not like a random catalogue whose order is imposed upon it arbitrarily, but logically connected. And just as what exists is ordered and harmonious, what comes into being betrays an order too. Not a mere sequence, but an astonishing concordance. (Meditations 4.45) 

Pigliucci makes this point himself, quoting Cicero:

[Cleanthes] fourth cause [for the existence of the Stoic god], and that the strongest, is drawn from the regularity of the motion and revolution of the heavens, the distinctness, variety, beauty, and order of the sun, moon, and all the stars, the appearance only of which is sufficient to convince us they are not the effects of chance.[28]

Providence is the stability and coherence of natural events that enable life to exist; the predictability that allows us to understand the world. Examples of providence in action are tides, the seasons, the motion of the stars, the cycle of life and death.[29]

A Benevolent Cosmos

Is the Cosmos good to us, good for us, beneficial?

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. This is the Greek idea of plenitude, abundance, of nature providing for all our needs.

In this sense, and with a new understanding of our terms, Nature providentially sustains us, nurtures us, allows us to flourish, and in the broadest sense of the term, takes care of us and life in general. The Cosmos does not have to know what it is doing for it to be to our advantage. However, the question arises: if the Cosmos were rationally, providentially, and benevolently organized, surely there would be nothing horrid in it?

The Stoics accepted sickness and calamity as part of the unavoidable regular workings of the Cosmos. Nature cannot violate the laws of Nature. We can have no miracles, and this is the only Nature we can have.[30] A naturally occurring catastrophe that causes us personal pain is the normal functioning of the larger whole. Whatever is good for the whole, is necessarily good for us. As integral parts of a wider system that enables us to live at all, whatever happens to us incidentally in the workings of the whole cannot be wrong in any moral sense. To quote Epictetus:

“If I in fact knew that illness had been decreed for me at this moment by destiny, I would welcome even that; for the foot, too, if it had understanding, would be eager to get spattered with mud.”[31]

Bacterial diseases cause death, illness, and suffering and ravage communities; however, without bacteria, there would be no life on earth at all. Bacteria are not evil but natural. Here is where Stoic phusis intersects with Stoic ethics, and moral character.

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.

Here is Epictetus again:

To treat nothing as a matter of private profit, not to plan about anything as though a detached unit, but to act like the foot or the hand, which, if they had the faculty of reason and understood the constitution of nature, would never exercise choice or desire in any other way but by reference to the whole.[32]

If we are to be true to the holistic view of the Stoics, we should understand that we are an integral living part of that living whole, as part of a human community. In dealing with whatever happens, you keep in mind that the whole, your friends, your family, the wider world, the cosmopolis thrives nonetheless and your personal circumstances are simply part of that unfolding.

Returning now to our principle question: Is the Stoic God untenable in the light of modern science? I have borrowed four criteria from The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science^[33] against which we can test this hypothesis:

Is there an objective reality shared by all rational observers?

Do natural laws govern this objective reality?

Can this reality be discovered by means of systematic observation and experimentation?

Does Nature have uniformity of laws, and most, if not all, things in nature must have at least a natural cause?

For the Stoics, the answer to all four questions is “yes.” The Stoic God is indeed tenable in the light of modern science. This being the case, why would we need to rethink the scientific foundations of Stoic ethics, as Pigliucci suggests?

Do Stoic Ethics Depend on an Ordered Cosmos?

The first point to be made is that the Cosmos is ordered along scientific lines, so we do not need to question the foundations of Stoic ethics at all.

The second point is that it is hard to see how one would get to the fundamental tenets of Stoic ethics without this view of Cosmic order. The Stoics were famous for the unified nature of their philosophy, physics, ethics, and logic, all being interdependent, inseparable. Julia Annas, a classics scholar, makes this point clearly:

Becoming a good Stoic requires more, however, than mastering the ethical part. Stoic philosophy consists of all three parts strongly unified into a whole (a point indicated in two of our major sources for the ethical part of Stoicism). . . . The person who has studied ethics, then, needs to go on not only to study the other two parts but to integrate their results with ethics to produce a unified understanding from all three perspectives.^[34]

Whether we could get to these ethical positions from another philosophical position, an atomistic, reductionist, indeterministic view of the world remains to be seen. It has yet to be done. The Stoics’ Hellenistic rivals, the Epicureans, had such an alternative atomistic/reductionist view of the world, and came up with a very different ethical system, based on personal pleasure, rather than the Stoic primacy of rational moral choice, or virtue and knowledge of Nature.^[35]

Marcus Aurelius might appear to suggest a possibility. He frequently asks himself whether there is “providence or atoms” or “order or randomness.”^[36]

“Either it is a well-arranged universe, or a chaos huddled together, but still a universe.” (Meditations  4.27)

However, these are personal thought experiments around causality and randomness. Accepting the virtuous life as the best possible life as a personal choice, Marcus does not provide a reconstruction of the Stoic ethical system from the ground up and does not deviates from the orthodox Stoic viewpoint of an ordered Cosmos.[37]

If we now consider the fundamental tenet of Stoicism, to live in harmony with Nature,[38] no matter how we might rephrase it,[39] we must then suppose a harmonious Nature. A Nature that is real, knowable, and ordered, so we can rationally harmonize our lives with it. The task of redefining this would require getting to ethical positions such as the following, and Stoic ethical positions are going to need to make sense in the light of any new explanation of how we arrive at them.

The universe that you see, containing the human and the divine, is a unity; we are the limbs of a mighty body. Nature brought us to birth as kin, since it generated us all from the same materials and for the same purposes, endowing us with affection for one another and making us companionable. . . . Let us hold things in common, as we are born for the common good. Our companionship is just like a stone arch, which would collapse without the stones’ mutual support to hold it up. (Seneca, Letters 95.52–53)

Without rationality, without a rational world, what can we understand about ourselves as members of a rational moral community?

When we look at it, on the one hand, there is no need to abandon the Stoic idea of Nature–Cosmos–God, and on the other hand, there is simply no alternative foundation to Stoic ethics.

Should We Use the Word God?

While we could simply refer to the Stoic God as Nature, the most persuasive argument to continue using the word is that the ancient Stoic writings are replete with references to God, and we cannot erase the word from their texts. Surely it would be better to understand what the Stoics meant by the word God, rather than object to the word because we hold it to be culturally sensitive or confusing.

If we understand what the Stoics were discussing and describing, it doesn’t really matter what it is called, there is no room for confusion unless we insist on being confused. Beyond that, the modern word Nature does not have the same richness of meaning as Stoic phusis.

Whichever is the case, we cannot say that contemporary Stoics are wrong to revere the Cosmos, to love the wonders of Nature, to see it is as excellent and bountiful, to express gratitude to be alive, to love their fellow humans and the cosmopolis, to care for the living world. However, it is wrong to think the Stoic God does not fit with modern science.

Notes

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[1] Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? (Harvard University Press, 2004), 21.

[2] Michael Lapidge, “A Problem in Stoic Cosmology,” Phronesis 18.3, 1973, 240–278.

^[3] Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers (Delphi Classics), VII.135.

[4] Merriam–Webster’s Online Dictionary, s.v., “Pantheism.” Retrieved online https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pantheism

^[5] Katja Maria Vogt, “A Unified Notion of Cause,” Rhizomata 6, No. 1 (2018).

^[6] Massimo Pigliucci, “The Stoic God Is Untenable in the Light of Modern Science,” The Side View. Retrieved online https://thesideview.co/articles/the-stoic-god-is-untenable-in-the-light-of-modern-science/

[7] Merriam–Webster’s Online Dictionary, s.v., “Monism.” Retrieved online https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monism

^[8]  Samuel Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics (Princeton Legacy Library, 2014).

[9] Small-scale quantum mechanics have not been reconciled with special relativity. Modern science has not solved this conundrum, neither did the Stoics; see Samuel Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics (Princeton Legacy Library, 2014), 1.

^[10] Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (Penguin, 2016 Kindle edition).

[11] Christopher Gill, Marcus Aurelius Meditations Books 1-6 (Oxford University Press, 2103), 138.

[12] Merriam–Webster’s Online Dictionary, s.v., “Holism.” Retrieved online https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/holism

[13] Cliff Hooker, ed., Philosophy of Complex Systems: Handbook of the of Science Philosophy (Elsevier, 2011).

[14] David Sedley, The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 447.

[15] John Sellars, Stoicism (Routledge, 2006), 91.

[16] Robert Drew Hicksk, 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica (11th Edition). Retrieved online https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Stoics

^[17] Sellars, John. Lessons in Stoicism (Penguin Books 2006), 42.

[18] David Grinspoon, Lonely Planets (Harper Collins, 2003), 271.

[19] Cicero, Marcus Tullius The Complete Works of Cicero; Complete Works of Cicero (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 23) (Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition), II.8.

^[20] Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel (Harvard University Press, 2001), 156.

^[21] Firmin DeBrabander, Spinoza and the Stoics (Continuum, 2007, Kindle edition).

^[22] “Stoicism 101.” How to be a Stoic. Retrieved online https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/stoicism-101/

^[23] Firmin DeBrabander, Spinoza and the Stoics.

[24] Long, Anthony A., and David N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers: Volume 1 (Cambridge University Press 1987) and Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, 2.83, 100–1, 122–30, 54J.

[25] John Bowker, “Special providence,” Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved online https://www.encyclopedia.com/philosophy-and-religion/other-religious-beliefs-and-general-terms/religion-general/special-providence#Specialprovidence

[26] Online Etymology Dictionary, s.v., “Providence,” Retrieved online https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=providence

^[27] Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M Cooper (Hackett 1997).

^[28] Cicero, Marcus Tullius The Complete Works of Cicero; Complete Works of Cicero (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 23) (Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition), II.V.

^[29] Seneca. On Providence Complete Works of Seneca (Illustrated), (Delphi Classics, Kindle Edition).

^[30] A. A. Longm, “The Stoic Concept of Evil,” The Philosophical Quarterly, 18, No. 73 (October 1968).

^[31] Epictetus, Discourses, Fragments, Handbook (Oxford World’s Classics), 82, and Kindle Edition. II.6.9-10

^[32] Ibid., Discourse X.

[33] J. L. Heilbron, ed., The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

[34] Julia Annas, “Ethics in Stoic Philosophy,” Phronesis 52 (2007): 58–87.

[35] “What is complete according to nature for a rational being qua rational being,” Cicero, Marcus Tullius The Complete Works of Cicero and Delphi Complete Works of Cicero (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 23, Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition), de Finibus III.33.

^[36] Meditations III.3, IV.3, IV.27, VII.32, VIII.17, XII.14, IX.28, IX.39, X.6, XII.14, XII.24.

[37] Christopher Gill, Marcus Aurelius Meditations Books 1-6 (Oxford University Press, 2013), XXIII.

[38] Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers (Delphi Classics), VII.85-88

[39] Lawrence Becker in his book A New Stoicism (Princeton University Press, 1999, Kindle Edition) proposes “follow the facts,” (Kindle Location 587).