I don’t often take a peek over at certain philosophy blogs but I saw a post on First Principles. This post is a digression unrelated to the subject at hand over there.
“Let there be light” seems like it should be a first principle. Everything–all created order–follows from it.
Maybe the light means the light of reason. God turned his mind to the task of creation, therefore “Let there be light” is the illuminating eye of God on all that is. Both Reason and Revelation are derivative of this first light, and without it there can not be anything at all.
Fiat Lux is the zeroth principle, even. First principles can’t exist without it. It is the principle upon which everything depends.
AMDG
Times-Dispatch of Vichy Earth 
I think you are right to say that the “light” of Genesis 1:3 is the metaphoric “light” of reason, order, intelligibility. Literal illumination comes in Genesis 1:14. I think we should follow St. John and understand the “let there be light” as the begetting of Christ as the begetting of the “Light of the World” (John 8:12 and 9:5). Thus “light” can also be expressed as Word or Logos.
I think you are also right to say that this is a first principle, or perhaps a first premise. The first premise of all thought is that thought can be fruitful because the world is intelligible. We can seek light because there is light to be found.
When John says “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” I suppose he could have written “the Light was made flesh.” I can’t say I know exactly what that means, but I do find it interesting that Jesus, the incarnation of the Light of Genesis 1:3, is nothing like what most moderns understand as a brainiac genius. The Word mad flesh was nothing like AI.
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Thanks JM, great additions. I agree–we seem to think that AI should transcend human knowledge, but with only human inputs I don’t see how it could possibly transcend humanity. Jesus, as the second person of the triune God, has (we could reductively say) “divine inputs”. If we imagined a machine with Divine inputs we could be reasonable to expect divine results.
God made Adam, Adam made Cain, Cain killed Abel–just one step removed from the divine and we still get very human outcomes.
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All true. But what I’m trying to say is that the Light of the World did not illuminate the world. Jesus appears to have had no interest in explaining natural science. So far as I recall, nature is for him only a source of symbols and metaphors that point to things beyond the world. I’m thinking of the Light of the World as a blinding light, like that which knocked Saul off his feet on the road to Damascus. This was a light that blinded Saul and then gave him a new light–a new understanding–as St. Paul.
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I would only quibble with your use of “only” when you say “nature is for him only a source of symbols and metaphors that point to things beyond the world”. They certainly CAN be, but someone once explained to me that Christ sanctified creation by entering it. Something about this material world matters–it matters in the sacraments NOW, and it matters in the resurrection LATER. So the material world isn’t, to my mind, ONLY signs and symbols, but countless Miracles tell us that God doesn’t preclude himself from using the material world in that way.
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I think you are right to be wary that talk of symbolism can easily slip into a Manichean dualism, in which the physical world and flesh become hateful and vile. I sometimes wonder if God is offended by the extreme ascetics who stager up to Heaven’s gate without having sampled the licit pleasures of the world he made. The idea may be more Platonic than Christian, but I think of licit carnal pleasures (especially beauty) as a foretaste of better things to come. They have value in themselves but even greater value is promises that will be kept.
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