FOREWORD
An introduction by Prof Richard H. Howells
I
first became acquainted with All-and-Nought through a friend, when I was asked to write a review on a book that was meant to demonstrate the truth of religions and the existence of a creator who intervenes in the universe. As an atheist, I never thought I could ever relate to such a book, let alone writing a review on it; not to mention that I’m even beyond that now and have been thinking of developing an independent article on that!
Anyway, I reluctantly accepted, perhaps the main reason being that this was the first time I saw anyone’s tried to prove religion via science; how on earth such a thing was possible? We all know that science is formed up on the basis of experience, it is provable and can be judged, and in every moment science gets more complete than its previous moment before. Science lives and learns, admits its mistakes and improves them. But no religion has ever had such characteristics before; no religion has ever been perfected throughout the time; religions have justified all their mistakes and have never considered themselves worthy of learning. As a university professor who has been dealing with logic and philosophy for more than 5 decades and had worked with hundreds of students, how could I be persuaded to read a book like this? Much less praising it too!
The only reason I was tempted was to find the answer to this same question: Why? Anyhow, as a scholar, I had to come up with a stronger argument against a theory in order to reject it, but the way of reasoning in All-and-Nought was such that if I wanted to question it, was in fact as if I was questioning the dialectics of logic. I became more and more curious to find out the bottom line, since I had laid down with Amir that I was only committed to the achieved result and I’d be stick to whatsoever proves, Amir also accepted.
To cut a long story short, I gathered a team of experts from various fields of science and gave them the practical parts of the book to observe the accuracy of the evidences and reveal the author's probable slips in presenting scientific documents since I was almost certain that in the middle of these scientific documents there must have been a slyness. The report of the scientific team was staggering: all the scientific evidences presented in the book were flawless! The report not only confirmed the accuracy of the book, but also made its content even more understandable to me! I guessed that I had probably chosen the wrong path in order to look for slips, so got back to where I was started from scratch again and this time in the religions’ chapters, I looked for slippage and a failure to meet reasoning. I suspected the problem must be there, so I asked a professor of religious studies to investigate and analysis the subject and get me a detailed description of its dimensions . But there was nothing wrong with that either. Well, it's probably a matter of how the two subjects overlap one another, but after all, I was a professor of philosophy, how could I fail to notice such a thing?
This’s where I realized I was facing a serious theory that although may not be easily accepted, yet it’s kind of impossible to reject it. It’s fair to say I read this book at least 3 times, everything was fine, and all the arguments adopted from the most renowned scientists and reliable scientific theories. Of course, I had seen in the past that some religions tried to use scientific proofs for their legitimacy, but the science they were dependent on was more like "pseudo-science" rather than real science. In All-and-Nought we witness not only valid scientific findings, but also the ones upon which human knowledge is based.
Even the perceived methodological rigor in the book is unique of its kind: it sets out from NOTHING and arrives at EVERYTHING, and the fact that the "everything" part coincides with where the religions’ chapter begins. The reader, is taken through a labyrinth towards the "everything". Some may think that this book is classified as a New Thought genre, yet I believe a new category should be established for it; maybe Scientific Faith or whatsoever, but what is obvious is this book doesn’t fit into any of the existing categories.
As a book, although All-and-Nought cannot be said to be a perfect one, yet it’s undoubtedly an acceptable platform for presenting a theory. And as a theory, one of the drawbacks to All-and-Nought is that in its presentation, scientific – and other - issues are so intertwined that makes understanding far beyond the level of an individual. This is a point that the author himself, while As a book, although All-and-Nought cannot be said to be a perfect one, yet it’s undoubtedly an acceptable platform for presenting a theory. And as a theory, one of the drawbacks to All-and-Nought is that in its presentation, scientific – and other - issues are so intertwined that makes understanding far beyond the level of an individual. This is a point that the author himself, while acknowledging previous synthetic theorems such as the principle of sufficient reason and its derivatives, as well as our other pre-experimental principles, makes their application conditional on scientific observations and beyond the limits of experience, then their value negates. Although this conditionality, in its own way, expresses a "theorem" within its underlying feeling, and each theorem is either analytical, pre-empirical or synthetic-empirical, hence as a theory, the conditionality of All-and-Nought on scientific experience becomes a theorem that says: the principles of metaphysic apply only within the realm of experience, but in All-and-Nought they also have scientific values. I believe that from here on, it’s on scientists and scholars to come around and challenge it.
Another problem might be All-and-Nought is not a purely analytic proposition because it has neither a new compositional factor nor can it be questioned for that. But at the same time, this theory has a new "fact" that is also questionable. In other words, from the pure analysis of a priori compound theorems, the concept of conditionality to experience is not used. But again, we see All-and-Nought has entered the discussion from the gateways of philosophy, hard sciences, theoretical reason, and gets into the principle of logical and exploratory power of reason and intuition based on the critique of reason and sense. According to this feature, All-and-Nought can be divided into four or five main explorations, each of which can be evaluated separately in its place: logical, metaphysical and experimental scientific, through these, exploring the elements, principles and theorems of ethics as well as the system of values.
The complexity of All-and-Nought is that it can be distinguished neither by inductive nor by deductive critique, and an amalgam of both is needed to understand and develop it; and if not impossible, at least it’s difficult to follow since induction and deduction can hardly merge together. Because neither pure induction nor deduction is possible at all, nor inductive considerations can no longer be considered as a yardstick for scientific issues. As it is said, a theorem is not a scientific issue, unless it can be proved by an inductive method.
One more possible problem is that this analytic theorem is neither empirically provable nor empirically refutable, nor can it be refuted or proved by metaphysical reasoning as well. It can only be measured and considered by logical or mathematical criteria. What has been, and still is important to me personally, is that this theory is based on the strongest human findings and whether right or wrong, has opened up a path that can no longer be closed.
Theoretically, any statement that has a meaning, and in other words is neither negligible nor worthless, and is not also considered as "habitual knowledge"; or to put it more clearly, adds something to our knowledge, can be considered a scientific statement and is distinguished by being experiential. The future will judge whether All-and-Nought has added anything to our knowledge or not, and if so, where it stands. In any case, what we have to accept today is that this theory has come to make drastic changes in our beliefs, and whether these changes will improve us as humans or not, only time will tell.
Richard H. Howells
New Westminster, BC