page_title: Epistemic theory of miracles
section_title: John Polkinghorne
hierarchical_section_title: Epistemic theory of miracles / John Polkinghorne
caption_attribution_description: English: Boling water in colour
context_page_description: The epistemic theory of miracles is the name given by the philosopher William Vallicella to the theory of miraculous events given by Augustine of Hippo and Baruch Spinoza. According to the theory, there are no events contrary to nature — that is no "transgressions", in Hume's sense, of the laws of nature. An event is a miracle only in the sense that it does not agree with our understanding of nature, or fit our picture of nature, or that it thwarts our expectations as to how the world should behave. According to a perfect scientific understanding there would be no miracles at all.
  The name of the theory is derived from the Ancient Greek word ἐπιστήμη, episteme, meaning "well-founded knowledge".
context_section_description: The view of particle physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne is somewhat similar.  Polkinghorne argues that an apparently simple event like boiling water, where a small quantity of liquid changes into a large quantity of steam (a phase transition) would seem miraculous to someone who had not seen it every day.
  I try to understand God's action that we call miraculous in the same sort of way. There is an underlying consistency of God's relationship to the world but the existence of a new regime may mean that consistency expresses itself in totally unprecedented, totally unexpected consequences.
  Polkinghorne argues that God cannot control things on the macroscopic scale by acting microscopically on each elementary particle in the universe, but that He can act within the framework of chaos theory as "pure spirit". As the complex nonlinear systems of life oscillate back and forth trying to decide which strange attractor to move towards, God intervenes gently in the direction that moves the system where he wishes it to go.  See Quantum mysticism.
caption: The miracle of boiling
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