[Themaintainers] theologies of maintenance

[Bastien]

Hi David,

David Zvi Kalman <depst at sas.upenn.edu> writes:

> I'm a PhD student working at the intersection of Jewish history and
> the history of technology. I'm currently doing research on
> "theologies of maintenance" — that is, understandings of God as a
> being without whom the universe would cease to exist/fall apart/etc.

Not directly related to your inquiry, but I've always wondered if
the thought experiment of the "ship of theseus" (which dates back to
Heraclitus) was born out of everyday concerns, or if it was somehow
related to biblical or mythical narratives.

> Does anyone know if this frame has been associated with technological
> maintenance in the past? There is so much rich material to work with
> and I would be surprised if I'm the first to look into this.

Whitehead's theory of God in _Process and Reality_ pictures a God who
is both actively "building" the universe and "patient" with it.  It's
a mix between Leibniz's God as an architect and Spinoza's God as being
the nature itself in the becoming. As far as I can remember, Whitehead
does not refer to technical maintenance or to "repairing", but his all
vision resonates with technical maintainance issues a lot (or perhaps
that's just me).

2 cents,

-- 
 Bastien