These two chapters do not actually fit together, since one completes the discussion of the purpose of Creation while the other begins the discussion of Providence (meaning what parts of events in this world God knows) that will take up the next several chapters. Nevertheless, I thought we’d cover both this week, because they are somewhat technical and I do not wish to linger over them.

THE SIZE AND WONDER OF THE UNIVERSE AS PROOFS AGAINST THE CENTRALITY OF HUMANITY IN CREATION

Rambam opens Chapter 14 by discussing the sheer size of the universe. According to his calculations—and I don’t intend to evaluate them here—the distance from the center of the Earth to the farthest point of Saturn is about 88 million miles. That figure, Rambam says, argues against humanity being at its center in terms of importance, since it is difficult to imagine such a large apparatus having been created for such an insignificant part of it.

Rambam recognizes, however, that there is a way around that argument. While it is hard to imagine God creating such a bulky apparatus for the sake of producing one small item (a needle, in Rambam’s example), if that apparatus can guarantee the continued production, life, and death of a lengthy series of such items, it might be worthwhile. To translate back into our terms, the universe might have been created for humanity as a whole, and it took a uviverse of this size to support the continuity of live over thousands of years.

BACK TO THE SPHERES (BRIEFLY)

Here Rambam argues from the noble qualities of the spheres, from their being formed from more perfect matter than the Earth is made of, and from the intelligence of the spheres (as we’ve seen before). All of this, therefore, argues against the notion that the universe was created for the sake of humanity, even according to those who believe those spheres were created in time.

HOW TO HANDLE HAZAL’S MISCALCULATIONS?

The most interesting part of the chapter, though, comes at the end when Rambam briefly discusses Hazal’s apparently faulty calculations of the size of the universe. Rambam had said that from the center of the Earth to the sphere of Saturn was a distance of at least 8700 years (traveling 40 mil a day, with a mil being 2000 amah; each amah is about a foot and a half, so 2000 are about 3500 feet, so 40 mil are a little over 26½ miles). There is a statement of Hazal that says the distance to the seventh sphere is 7000 years travel. Rambam points out that those without a knowledge of astronomy would assume Hazal’s number was wildly exaggerated, when it turns out by his calculations to be fairly accurate. (I believe that we think those distances are actually much greater than either of the numbers presented here).

More interesting, though, is Rambam’s next paragraph, which reads (I’m transcribing—I have not yet purchased the scanner that I mean to, so bear with me):

"Do not ask of me to show that everything they have said concerning astronomical matters conforms to the way things really are. For at that time mathematics were imperfect. They did not speak about this as transmitters of dicta of the prophets, but rather because in those times they were men of knowledge in these fields or because they had heard these dicta from the men of knowledge who lived in those times. Because of this I will not say with regard to dicta of theirs, which as we find, corresponds to the truth, that they are incorrect or have been said fortuitously. For whenever it is possible to interpret the words of an individual in such a manner that they conform to a being whose existence has been demonstrated, this is the conduct that is most fitting and most suitable for an equitable man of excellent nature."

A BROADLY APPLICABLE THEORY OF RABBINIC ERROR

Rambam’s paragraph encompasses a whole theory of how to approach errors in Hazal outside of their realms of expertise, a theory that fits just as well today as it did then. Rambam says that if Hazal were to make a mistake in an issue of astronomy, that would not bother him. Since Hazal were not, in that instance, transmitting a tradition of the prophets (or interpreting their words), they do not have an absolute claim to truth. Rather, they were speaking as educated men of the era in which they lived (or reporting the conclusions of the experts of the era in which they lived). In that context, it is possible that their math (or biology, etc.) was faulty, and then we should not feel bound to believe in their conclusions. IMPORTANT NOTE: Rambam has not said this in a halakhic context; there, it may be that we need to follow Hazal anyway, despite our view of a situation. At the very least, that gets more complicated. Regarding our emunat hakhamim, our fealty to the Sages, however, Rambam believes we have the right to recognize when they are operating within their sacred task—and hence to be followed rather than critiqued—and when they are functioning as members of their time.

Yet Rambam adds one more important caveat: Even when he recognizes the possibility of error by Hazal (because of faulty mathematics and so on), if he can find an interpretation that puts them in the right, he will, as an expression of his respect for Hazal. He thus walks the line between absolute fealty and dismissiveness, recognizing their limitations but nevertheless striving to find the truth in what they said.

CHAPTER 15—POSSIBLE AND IMPOSSIBLE

This chapter discusses the quandary of what to define as impossible. Rambam points out that contradictions in terms are simply impossible, and therefore do not produce logical quandaries. For example, God cannot produce another being just like Him or an immovable object, because those are impossible in the context of an omnipotent God. Those do not show that God’s power is limited, just that it is possible to verbalize and imagine impossibilities.

Rambam mentions this because (I believe) it will be relevant to his discussion of Providence, in that as long as he can show that a certain view is logically impossible, he will not have to worry that he is improperly limiting God’s power. In his discussion, though, he also mentions that many religious arguments in his time degenerated into an argument over whether something was impossible or not, which leads directly to a brief paragraph that is the most interesting part of the chapter.

THE HUMAN MIND AND THE IMPOSSIBLE

Rambam questions whether there is some way to differentiate between the possible and the impossible in our thoughts about them. If someone asserts that something is possible, can we reason out whether it is or is not? Or is that an issue for the imagination? Then he questions the difference between reason and imagination—are they a unit or separate? And if they are separate, is there something outside of either of these faculties that "decides" which one to use, or is it the intellect itself which, self-referentially, assigns thinking to one or the other mode.

These questions, which Rambam suggests could be profitably investigated much further, are in fact central to the modern discussions of Artificial Intelligence. Without laying claim to any knowledge of the field, I know that those in AI who believe that an intelligent computer should be modeled on human thought processes struggle with these exact questions. Such topics as the proper role of imagination, when to think and when to imagine, and so on, are all part of the attempt to define intelligence fully in the hopes of reproducing it in a computer.

Rambam has just shown us that those questions, for all that the application to computers is obviously new, are much older than we might have thought. Ein hadash tahat hashemesh, there is nothing new under the sun. I would also note that Rambam (in the second part of the Moreh) had already said that he believes prophecy mixes the intellectual and imaginative faculties, so that this question is not only theoretical—prophecy is an expression of the highest religious accomplishment, so the question of how to balance the two faculties that produce it is certainly a central one.