Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
I am long overdue in asking your prayers for the repose of the soul of our friend, Dr. Wolfgang Smith, who died on July 19, 2024, after a life spent in the pursuit and defense of the Truth. I was surprised to find that the Wikipedia article on Dr. Smith was quite accurate, so I will quote from that article first before highlighting Wolfgang’s special contribution to the mission of the Kolbe Center.
Wolfgang Smith was born February 18, 1930, in Vienna. He graduated in 1948 from Cornell University with majors in philosophy, physics, and mathematics. Two years later he took his M.S. in physics at Purdue University and ultimately his Ph.D. in mathematics at Columbia University.
He worked as an aerodynamicist at Bell Aircraft Corporation in the early 1950s, and during this time researched and published on the problem of atmospheric reentry. He was a mathematics professor at MIT, UCLA and Oregon State University, doing research in the field of differential geometry and publishing in academic journals such as the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Journal of Mathematics, and others. He retired from academic life in 1992.
In parallel with his academic duties, he developed philosophical inquiries in the fields of metaphysics and the philosophy of science, publishing in specialized journals such as The Thomist, Sacred Web: A Journal of Tradition and Modernity, and Sophia: The Journal of Traditional Studies.
Philosophical Work
Smith was a member of the Traditionalist School of metaphysics, having contributed extensively to its criticism of modernity while exploring the philosophical underpinnings of the scientific method and emphasizing the idea of bringing science back into a Platonist and Aristotelian framework of traditional ontological realism.
Identifying with Alfred North Whitehead's critique of the "bifurcationism" and "physical reductionism" of scientism — i.e., the belief that, first, the qualitative properties of the objects of perception ("corporeal" objects) are ultimately distinct from their respective quantitative properties (the "physical" objects studied by the various sciences); and second, that physical objects are in fact all there is, meaning corporeal objects are reduced to their physical counterparts — Smith examines critically in his work Cosmos and Transcendence (1984) the Cartesian roots of modern science.
Proceeding with his critique of scientism in his monograph, The Quantum Enigma (1995), Smith raised the questions of whether the scientific method is in fact dependent on the scientistic philosophy and, if it is not, whether linking it to other philosophical frameworks would provide better solutions to the way physical phenomena are interpreted. Demonstrating that neither the scientific method nor its results require adhering to a scientistic metaphysics, he answered in the negative to the first question, resulting in the conclusion that it is possible to link the scientific method to any underlying ontology, or to none at all. Working then into the second question, he proposed linking the scientific method — and thus the modern sciences — to a non-bifurcationist, non-reductionist metaphysics in the form of a modified Thomistic ontology, showing how such a move resolves the apparent incoherences of quantum mechanics.
According to Smith, this interpretation of quantum mechanics allows for the usage of the hylomorphic concepts of potency and act to properly understand quantum superposition. For example, instead of considering that a photon is "simultaneously a wave and a particle" or "a particle in two distinct positions," one may consider that the photon (or any other physical object) at first does not exist in act, but only in potency; i.e., as "matter" in the hylomorphic meaning of the term, having the potential of becoming "a wave or a particle," or "of being here or there." Whether one of these outcomes will happen to this undifferentiated matter is dependent on the determination imposed upon it by the macroscopic corporeal object that provides its actualization. A photon, thus, would be no more strange for having many potentials than, say, an individual who has the "superposed" potentials of learning French and/or Spanish and/or Greek, all the while reading and/or walking and/or stretching his arms. A further consequence of this interpretation is that a corporeal object and its "associated physical object" are not dichotomized or reduced one to the other anymore but, on the contrary, altogether constitute a whole of which different aspects are dealt with depending upon perspective
Smith's understanding of the relationship between corporeal and physical objects extends to his interpretation of biology, where he became an opponent of Darwinian evolution, as the fundamental element in a species would be its form, not its causal history, which evolutionists favor. This led him to be a supporter of the intelligent design movement, though his own hylomorphic approach is not widely adopted by mainstream intelligent design theorists (who, like evolutionists, also favor causal history, albeit differently).
Smith also took a stance towards a relativistic rehabilitation of geocentrism.
Collaboration with the Kolbe Center
Wolfgang made a unique contribution to the mission of the Kolbe Center by appearing in our DVD series “Foundations Restored.” In his presentation he gave a brilliant summary of the intellectual crisis brought about by the widespread acceptance of reductionist Enlightenment philosophy:
Since the beginning of the so-called Enlightenment in the seventeenth century, the mindset of Western society has been impacted by a secular ideology masquerading in the garb of a physics based science, the effect of which has been profound.
It is as if a new race of mankind had emerged, a people no longer capable of intuiting the sacred and the supernatural.
And whereas the Catholic Church has been engaged, from the start, in combating this atheistic onslaught - notably in the anti-modernist movement that emerged in the latter half of the nineteenth century - a visible shift, triggered by the Second Vatican Council, has caused segments of the faithful, including high spokesmen of the Church, to fall victim to the proffered scientistic premises, resulting in rampant confusion and apostasy.
One of the most pernicious of these touted discoveries is the astrophysical cosmology known as the Big Bang theory, which stipulates that the universe originated in an explosion some Thirteen point Eight billion years ago and has been flying apart ever since.
What renders this stipulation well- nigh irresistible is the fact that it is supposedly based upon Einsteinian physics, which - again supposedly - is founded upon the most rigorous scientific grounds.
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that this doctrine has been accepted by leading spokesmen of the Catholic Church.
Yet the fact remains that inasmuch as Big Bang cosmology contradicts Catholic doctrine radically beginning with the opening verses of Genesis, as these have been understood in Catholic tradition since apostolic times the impact of this scientistic innovation upon the Catholic faith community as a whole cannot but be disastrous.
In recent years, astrophysical observations have detected - and subsequently verified beyond all possibility of doubt - a global cosmic structure which disproves the Big Bang theory definitively, that is to say, once and for all.
Whether the leaders of the astrophysics community are prepared to admit the fact or not, the theory is now defunct.
For all its vaunted accomplishments and Nobel Prize discoveries - which now prove not to be real - it too has turned out at last to be no more than a godless ideology masquerading in scientific garb.
What, then, are these findings, and why do they prove fatal to the theory?
That is what I wish now to explain.
The End of the Enlightenment
It is to be noted, first of all, that Einsteinian physics - that is to say, the Einsteinian deviation from the classical theory - is premised on the stipulation that the cosmos is bereft of design, namely, of structures that cannot be explained in terms of random fluctuations.
Unacknowledged though it be, it is upon this ideological assumption for which there is no scientific support at all that Einstein’s so-called Principle of Relativity and thus Einsteinian physics at large is actually based.
Now, in the case of Big Bang cosmology that stipulation takes the form of the so called Copernican - also termed Cosmological - Principle, which affirms that, when viewed on a sufficiently large scale, the cosmos proves to be perfectly uniform.
It is supposedly with the cosmos at large as with a volume of gas.
Whereas, on a microscopic scale, there are molecules moving at different speeds and in different directions, yet when viewed in the large the gas is nonetheless homogeneous and fully specified by its temperature, pressure, and density.
Inasmuch, therefore, as Big Bang cosmology satisfies the aforesaid Copernican Principle, the discovery of even a single large scale structure - a structure, that is, which does not conform to that Principle suffices to disprove the theory.
And this is precisely what has happened within the last decade.
Meticulous and incontrovertible observations, carried out by a satellite - named after the physicist Max Planck - have revealed a global structure, extending through the cosmos at large, a fact which flatly contradicts the Copernican Principle.
End of the story.
But actually there is more - a great deal more!
Let me fill in the specifics.
What has been discovered is that is an electromagnetic radiation,
identifiable by its spectrum, filling the cosmos at large, known as the cosmic microwave background or CMB.
Aficionados of Einsteinian cosmology regard it as a remnant of the universe some Three Hundred Thousand years after the Big Bang.
In truth, however, it is this structure in the CMB which rigorously disproves that Einsteinian theory by the fact that it constitutes an axis a great circle in fact something which, most assuredly, should not be there. something namely that cannot be explained away as the result of statistical fluctuations.
As we have said - the existence of that axis disproves Big Bang cosmology.
Period.
Yet there's more!
The most amazing fact of all utterly devastating to the Einsteinians is that this axis constitutes a circle within the ecliptic of our solar system!
That solar system, which was supposed to resemble a random flake of dust in relation to the cosmos as a whole, proves thus to be special.
So highly special, in fact, as to determine the global structure of the universe!
Nothing could be more antithetical not only to Einsteinian physics, but indeed to post-Galilean astronomy at large.
This discovery of what astrophysicists have, quite understandably, dubbed - the axis of evil - actually points us back to the brink of pre-modern astronomy, and signals thereby the end of what historians term the Enlightenment.
It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of Dr. Wolfgang Smith’s contribution to the intellectual life of the Church and to the mission of the Kolbe Center. Please join us in thanking God for him and remember him in your prayers.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. And may his soul, and the souls of all of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace! Amen.
In Domino,
Hugh Owen
P.S. Our friend and colleague Daniel Clough has written a book Genesis According to the Saints in which he documents the constant teaching of the Fathers and Doctors on the literal historical truth of “the sacred history of Genesis.” We are pleased to make the book available on the Kolbe website at this link.
