Roger Boskovich’s Arguments for God’s Existence — Variations of the Cosmological Argument

Abstract

Roger Joseph Boskovich is one of our most eminent Croatian scientists and philosophers. He is especially renowned for his theories in the fields of physics, mathematics and astronomy, such that they were deemed noteworthy even among his contemporaries both in Croatia and Europe. In the area of philosophy, Boskovich is most often spoken of in the context of natural philosophy and the philosophy of science. The general public is probably unaware of  the fact that he devoted some ten pages of his work to God. In his most famous work entitled Theory of Natural Philosophy, he adds an Appendix to Metaphysics on the Soul and God wherein he puts forward his variations of the arguments on God’s existence. The Appendix enables us to view his contribution to physics from a new angle. Namely, he concludes that an explanation of nature as a whole does not have its endpoint in nature itself, but rather in metaphysics, that is to say, the philosophy of religion. The aim of this paper is to analyse those particular arguments for God’s existence which Boskovich elaborated in greater detail and also to examine the extent to which they are tenable today.