In his 1985 book The Philosophical Scientists, Foster chose as "philosophical scientists," Arthur Stanley Eddington, James Jeans, Bertrand Russell, and Alfred North Whitehead (Foster called them "The 1930 Cambridge Club").

Cambridge University has made outstanding contributions — typically the discovery of the electron and the splitting of the nucleus which eventually led to atomic energy. But it was also noteworthy for linguistic philosophy and the analysis of the meaning of statements. These four men did not comprise a school since they did not appear to have a common objective, but they knew each other and influenced each other and so might be called a club. I call it ‘the 1930 Cambridge Club’ because it was responsible for philosophical ideas relevant to the New Physics and because it peaked about the year 1930.

The Philosophical Scientists, , p.2

To his Cambridge Club, Foster adds Erwin Schrödinger's great books, What Is Life? and Mind and Matter.

Foster combines original ideas from these five to refute Darwinian evolution and discover a God that has programmed the DNA in all living things, sending the information content via electromagnetic radiations from the Sun to Earth.

Foster starts with Eddington's The Nature of the Physical World (the 1927 Gifford Lectures). He takes two major ideas from Eddington. 1) The stuff of the world is mind-stuff. 2) The law of entropy is different from all other physical laws.

From Jeans he takes the idea that "the universe is the thought of a mathematical thinker."

Using Russell's identification of logic with mathematics, Foster adds the fact that modern computers are logical machines to conclude we can understand Eddington's mind-stuff as software and Jeans' mathematical thinker as God programming the machine.

Foster finds Whitehead's emphasis on all life as mechanisms arranged in a hierarchy with consciousness at the top. For Whitehead, that was God overseeing and maintaining the continuity of creation.

Finally, Foster sees Schrödinger as supporting Whitehead. Although Schrödinger sees his consciousness as controlling the motions of his atoms, in the Eastern thought admired by Schrödinger individual consciousnesses blend into a single cosmic consciousness.

1. My body functions as a pure mechanism according to the Laws of Nature.

2. Yet I know, by incontrovertible direct experience, that I am directing its motions. . . . The only possible inference from these two facts is, I think, that I — I in the widest meaning of the word, that is to say, every conscious mind that has ever said or felt ‘I’ — am the person, if any, who controls the ‘motion of the atoms’ according to the Laws of Nature.

ibid, p.25

He writes...

Would Whitehead have agreed that ‘The Stuff of the World is Mind-Stuff’?

We come back to the point whether Whitehead could have agreed with Eddington and Jeans that ‘the stuff of the world is mind- stuff’. I think so through the sequence of derivations from Whitehead:

1. Reality is organism, that system of distinct entities whose mutual conditioning creates a whole which is more than the sum of the parts.

2. The model for organism is combination mathematics.

3. Combination mathematics is equally the model for literacy and meanings whose ‘whole is greater than the sum of the parts’.

Thus the essence of both Eddington-Jeans and of Whitehead is the reality of literacy, the art of linguistic combination arrangements. Overall I think the conclusion from the 1930 Cambridge Club is

‘Reality is organised mind-stuff.’

ibid, p.31

Foster identified "mind-stuff" with the nineteenth-century idea of an "ether." Foster called it "the medium for the transmission of radiations such as light and radio, which are information mind-stuff." Radio broadcast transmissions do contain information, but solar radiation contains very little, since it is close to "blackbody radiation" in thermal equilibrium at some temperature.

Foster hopes that solar radiation in providing all the information in the DNA of humans and all living things.

God as programmer From the cybernetic analysis we need a cosmic Programmer function, and since this is the highest level of a cybernetic system, then it appears justified to equate this to God. The chief significance of a programmer is that he is free in at least two respects:

To programme or not to programme

To programme selectively according to conscious choice.

This freedom can be described as pure intelligence. If we wish. to know ‘where’ God, is, I have suggested elsewhere that this is the Void — omniscient, omnipresent, invisible mind-stuff. The analogy with ourselves would be a state of lucid consciousness and capacity for thought.

‘Logos’ as programme

God as programmer writes the programme and this is LOGOS (the Word). LOGOS is the interface between God and nature. Thus LOGOS is the programme or specification for all manifestations from the cosmic constants to the DNA. It is the interface of specified specificity. As to just ‘where’ LOGOS might be, we look for a place from which LOGOS can irradiate nature, and this would seem to be stars in general and (in our own case) the Sun.

ibid, pp. 178-9

Beyond his ideas of a "supernatural science," Foster claimed to have discovered a philosophical paradox that opposes entropy with what he calls "specificity." These ideas are worth quoting at length.

THERMODYNAMICS — THE WORLD OF ACCIDENT STATISTICS

In the first place I would make it clear that I shall not attempt to disprove the Second Law of Thermodynamics. As Sir Arthur Eddington stated:

The law that entropy always increases — the Second Law of Thermodynamics — holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. . . . But if your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

The Nature of the Physical World, p. 81.

What is entropy?

Entropy is the measure of the extent to which a system has come into a certain state under random (‘accidental’) forces. The simplest analogue is that of a pack of playing cards which were originally arranged in their four suits and sequences. If we now shuffle the cards then we increase their entropy, their state of random disorder, until they come into a state where no further shuffling can increase the random disorder, in which case we have reached maximum entropy. Two matters should be noted:

1. Entropy can be reduced by conscious sorting. We can lay the cards out on the table and collect them back into their original suits and sequences. Clerk Maxwell was the first to point out this possibility that ‘a conscious sorting demon’ can reduce entropy and reverse the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

2. The shuffling of the card pack essentially takes place in a state of ‘absent-mindedness’, i.e. the mental opposite of the conscious sorting of (1) above.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is a generalisation of such concepts about entropy and can be stated:

If a closed system is in a configuration that is not the equilibrium configuration, the most probable consequence is that the entropy of the system will increase with time.

Put another way, if one had a half-shuffled pack of cards, then time provides further shuffling to increase the entropy or randomness. The law refers to thermodynamics because it is mainly applied to the motion of atoms in gases under the influence of heat, but it is equally applicable to the state of order in any system including pure information systems (which is what a pack of cards is).

The philosophical significance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics

The great philosophical significance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics is that it can be equated to the direction of time as from past to future. A system of entities left to itself but capable of inner accidental collisions (i.e. shuffling) will increase its entropy with the passage of clock-time.

The derivation from this is that if we consider the universe to be a similar system of separate entities such as atoms, and if these atoms can collide with each other as shuffling, then the entropy of the universal system is increasing with time and the universe is moving in the direction of increasing disorder, i.e. the universe is running down with the passage of time. Indeed, the chapter from Eddington’s book from which I extracted the quotation at the beginning of this chapter is headed ‘The Running Down of the Universe’.

The philosophical paradox

Thus we here encounter the germs of a Paradox which will feature largely in this book:

1. If the universe is a system of blind chance with accidental collisions (‘shufflings’), then entropy is increasing with time and the universe is running down to effective extinction.

2. To set against this we have the concept that ‘the stuff of the world is mind-stuff’ and thus there could be an aspect which is not blind chance and accidental and so the universe could be sorting rather than shuffling, or at least there could be some sort of equilibrium between the two.

The analogue of the Paradox is that of a clockwork clock which is certainly running down with time but somebody may have a key and be winding it up at the same time. So we see the immense philosophical significance of the views of the 1930 Cambridge Club. The Older Physics from the nineteenth century associated with such names as Boltzman was immersed in mechanical concepts of the universe, and considered that a good scientist could make a mechanical model of all his problems (such as the structure of atoms). In that case the philosophical scene was set for a pessimistic outlook for humanity located in a system in which the future pointed to a running-down condition of increasing disorder, so one day ‘the clock will stop’. To set against this was the so-called Modern Physics created by Planck, Einstein and Heisenberg who told us that the universe was not mechanical, that you could not make mechanical models of it, and that although accidental chance and shuffling might have some part to play it was by no means the whole story. So in due course the 1930 Cambridge Club erected another point of view that reality is organic mind- stuff, ‘sorting stuff’.

ibid, pp. 34-37

Foster introduces his notion of "specificity." It is the idea that any specific arrangement of all the atoms, particularly one "arranged" by his programmer God sorting mind-stuff, actually is the very opposite of entropy and disorder. "Conscious sorting" has reduced it to zero entropy and perfect order.

On this analysis the entropy of a system is stated to be the number of its possible arrangements, provided each is valid and without restrictions. To such a system the normal mathematics of probability apply. This new statement of entropy gives exactly the same mathematics as the older variety based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

But why does entropy increase with the number of possible arrangements in a system of entities? Because entropy is the measure of the improbability of entities being in one pre-decided state; it is a measure of uncertainty, the uncertainty of specificity.

ibid, p. 37

The symmetrical paradox between entropy and specificity

The polar or inverse symmetry as between entropy and specificity is of great philosophical interest since it shows that the Paradox as between the running-down of the universe and its winding-up depends upon the same general mathematics with an inverse or NOT relationship.

We must agree with Eddington that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is a major law of nature. But we find that it is only half the likely truth and that it has a complement in a sort of Law of Specificity which is its obverse using the same general mathematics. Gradually in this book we approach such a possible Law of Specificity and, perhaps to our surprise, we shall find it to be the central law of organism.

ibid, p. 41

For Foster, life on Earth is the specific arrangement of atoms that was programmed from the Sun via electromagnetic radiation fro the Sun.

Like Foster, information philosophy looks carefully at the arrangement of atoms. "Arrangement" is simply the information content of any material structure. It also looks at the information communicated to/from other structures (sometimes by Foster's radiation, but more often by chemical contact - which of course reduces to the interchange of virtual photons).

All the information structures in the universe and all the information exchange going on between living systems, constitutes a much lower entropy than the maximum possible entropy that could be the case if today all matter was distributed randomly.

Information philosophy can't find a supernatural creator, but it does identify the cosmic creation process, which is explains the creation of all information in the universe. It involves entropy, and quantum chance, as Eddington suspected.

The proximate source of negative entropy (information) is the Sun, as Erwin Schrödinger made famous in 1944, and as David Foster pointed out.

The ultimate source of pockets of order, of negative entropy, of information structures like the Sun, is the expansion of the universe, as Eddington suspected.

"The expansion of the universe creates new possibilities of distribution faster than the atoms can work through them, and there is no longer any likelihood of a particular distribution being repeated. If we continue shuffling a pack of cards we are bound sometime to bring them into their standard order — but not if the conditions are that every morning one more card is added to the pack." New Pathways in Science, p.68.

At Harvard, in the late 1960's, David Layzer also argued that the expansion creates new possibilities faster than atoms can adjust, the germ of his explanation for the growth of order in the universe. Layzer apparently never credited Eddington.

Layzer definitely read The Nature of the Physical World, though perhaps not New Pathways in Science.