Leibniz and the Coincidence of Sunlight
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician, among other things. He is credited with developing Calculus independent of but contemporaneously with Isaac Newton. As such, he may be a hero for mathematicians while being a pariah for high school students struggling to understand why calculating the area under a curve will help them in life. But despite his contributions to math and science, he is largely overshadowed by Newton, who certainly has an easier name to remember. Fortunately for Leibniz, he had one other really significant contribution that cemented his legacy in a different field. Leibniz was very interested in the philosophical field of metaphysics, the study of how and why things work the way they do. Though we don’t really take his metaphysical insights seriously today, he is certainly a figure worth studying in the history of philosophy and religion.
One of the most interesting concepts that Leibniz worked into his philosophy is called “Pre-established harmony.” To be clear, I am not a philosopher and haven’t read the relevant material to really understand his views, but I think I can summarize well enough. Pre-established harmony suggests that the chain of cause and effect is essentially an illusion. One thing doesn’t cause another thing. They only appear to relate in this way because God preordained the way each thing would work independently to look as if it were caused by other things. If you push a cart and it starts rolling downhill, you didn’t cause that cart to go. Rather, God determined that the cart would move right at the moment that you pushed. The earth’s gravity isn’t really causing it to accelerate downhill. God established that the cart should accelerate at this moment, just as it happens to be on this hill. We don’t feel heat and light from the work of the sun. Rather, God has determined that we experience heat and light when it just so happens to be day time.
Now, this may all seem ridiculous and bizarre. We know better. We know that kinetic energy from our push causes the cart to move. We know that gravity from the earth pulls it downhill. We know energy is produced by nuclear fusion reactions in the sun that reaches us as heat and light. We know things cause one another. However, Leibniz’s strange view is prefigured in a place we may not expect: the first chapter of Genesis.
On the first day, God created light and separated the light from the dark. Day and night began on the first day of Creation. However, it wasn’t until the fourth day—after the creation of plants—that God finally created the sun, moon, and stars. The night and day already existed. The earth already had light, so it is unclear what the text means when it says they were present to give light to the earth. Perhaps the moon provides light at night and the sun focuses the light during the day. But furthermore, they are there to rule over the night and day and act as signs for the passing of days and seasons. In Genesis 1, the sun and moon aren’t the producers of light. Rather, they are markers, indicating the presence of light that had already been created days before.
This bizarre chain of events—night and day existing before sun and moon, plants being present without the sunshine to feed them, and the sun being more a marker of times than an independent light source—are hard to take seriously today. Surely, this isn’t meant to be taken literally. That would be nonsensical. It completely negates what we understand about the law of cause and effect. The sun had to come before plants because plants need the sun to survive and reproduce. The sun had to come before day and night started on the earth, because our experience of day and night occurs simply because the earth rotates on its axis, exposing different parts to the light of the sun at different times. However, this works very well if we let go of cause and effect and embrace pre-established harmony. The plants exist before the sun because God said so, and God’s word has the power to bring that about. More importantly, the light exists separate from the sun because light is from God, not from the sun.
I’m not suggesting that we seriously adopt pre-established harmony as our way of engaging with the world scientifically. However, it is worth considering what it would mean for us to live with such a worldview. The sad truth is that many people—even many Christians—live as if God didn’t exist, or perhaps more specifically, as if God’s existence didn’t matter. We live as if the only spiritual concern that mattered was what happened to us when we die. We try to be good to avoid hell and get to heaven. Our relationship with God is that of eternal judge and gatekeeper. Christ is the bouncer of heaven. God is a distant person who will meet us at the very end of things, hopefully favorably. When we live like this, we miss out on God being our counselor, comforter, helper, friend, and guide. Our spiritual practices fail. We forget to be grateful to God for everything, and even when we do choose to be grateful, we are only grateful for those very special things.
How many of us honestly wake up and thank God that we can breathe, walk, feel the sunshine, smell flowers, and live happily among other people? If we don’t, that’s probably because we either take them for granted or we thank different things. My lungs are the reason I can breathe. My feet and legs are the reason I can walk. The sun lets me feel its shine. Flowers offer their fragrance to the air. And my friends, family, and neighbors create a community I can take comfort and joy in. Certainly, all of those things are good, but what if we thanked God for all of those things? We could live as if Leibniz was right. The only reason we enjoy the smell of flowers is because God determined that it should be so. The entirety of Creation continues to exist from one day to another because God loves all of Creation, the mountains and oceans, the birds and trees, the millionaire CEO and the non-binary kid getting bullied in high school. While giving thanks to God, we could also learn to live into this love, seeing everything out in the world as something God loves and finds worthy to keep into the glorious tapestry of all Creation.
This even has some implications for the kindness we do for one another. As much as I encourage people to be grateful to each other, we should also recognize that our acts of love and kindness flow from God’s love in the world. I may lovingly and selflessly offer my time and energy to someone else because I care about them or I feel it is the right thing to do, but all that stems from God. God’s love through us moves us to care for a world in need. We should continue to be happy about our own health and well-being; sun, moon, and stars; flowers and birds; and the kindness of other people, but we can also recognize that all of these good things in our lives are not ultimately the source of our joy nor the root of the benefits they provide. Rather, just like the sun and moon in Genesis 1, they are signs for us of the light and love that lies behind them, the ultimate source of all good things: God.
