There is an ancient Jewish legend that goes like this: First the Holy One, blessed be God, tried to create the world according to the measure of mercy (Grace), but it fell apart. Then the Holy One tried to create according to the measure of justice (Judgment), but that too fell apart. Then what did God do? The Holy One took a measure of mercy and mixed it with an equal measure of justice and the result was our world. This little tale describes a unity of the two prime relational characteristics that religions have attributed to their God or gods. It also seems to illustrate the dynamic way in which we discern the relation between ourselves and the world. Mercy and justice are religious or moral terms, but they can be metaphorically expanded to show their experiential relationship with such descriptive unities as: cause/effect, dynamic/static, time/event, free/bound, motion/position, space/dimension, yes/no, on/off, plus/minus, go/stop. Each pair reflects a two-point or two-directional dynamic tension that governs and engenders creational activity, or the description thereof, each a harmonious unit like the free-flowing power of mercy balanced by the restrictive power of justice.
It seems that I have just described a religious parallel to the binary number theory, the functional basis of electronic computers. In even broader terms, the paradigm is valid in the quantum dynamics of modern physics, where all things disappear in the paradoxical mystery of particle or wave and position or motion.
We can carry the parallel to the human body, where all functions of life are engendered and controlled by the electrochemical, stop-and-go patterns of the billions of synapses in the brain and the nervous system.
With these two parallels in mind, let us explore some of the historical background in the transition of theological thinking to scientific theory, biological reality, and technological application.
Leibniz and the binary system
I will begin with one of the greatest minds of the seventeenth century, that transitional period from the Age of Belief to the Age of Enlightenment. That mind belonged to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, born 100 years after Luther died, in 1646, and a contemporary of Newton and Spinoza. This man was both the product and generator of one of history's great upheavals in intellectual development. Drawing on his knowledge of many fields, he was able to make apt analogies with number theory, ancient history, philosophy, politics, and biology. He was at the same time a philosopher, diplomat, engineer, and mathematician. He is best known for his mathematics, but math was not enough to occupy this great mind. He was a
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