We have now concluded our summary of the findings of modern physics, and may turn to consider how these findings affect the practical problems of philosophy and of everyday life. But let us first recapitulate the conclusions we have reached in our scientific discussion. Recapitulation Because we are human beings and not mere animals, we try to discover as much as we can about the world in which our lives are cast. We have seen that there is only one method of gaining such knowledge—the method of science, which consists in a direct questioning of nature by observation and experiment. The first thing we learn from such questioning is that the world is rational; its happenings are not determined by caprice but by law. There exists what we have called a ‘pattern of events’, and the primary aim of physical science is the discovery of this pattern. This, as we have seen, will be capable of description only in mathematical terms. The new quantum theory explained in the preceding chapter has provided a mathematical description of the pattern of events which is believed to be complete and perfect. For it enables us—in principle at least—to predict every possible phenomenon of physics, and not one of its predictions has so far proved to be wrong. In a sense, then, we might say that theoretical physics has achieved the main purpose of its being, and that nothing remains but to work out the details.
We have now concluded our summary of the findings of modern physics, and may turn to consider how these findings affect the practical problems of philosophy and of everyday life. But let us first recapitulate the conclusions we have reached in our scientific discussion. Recapitulation Because we are human beings and not mere animals, we try to discover as much as we can about the world in which our lives are cast. We have seen that there is only one method of gaining such knowledge—the method of science, which consists in a direct questioning of nature by observation and experiment. The first thing we learn from such questioning is that the world is rational; its happenings are not determined by caprice but by law. There exists what we have called a ‘pattern of events’, and the primary aim of physical science is the discovery of this pattern. This, as we have seen, will be capable of description only in mathematical terms. The new quantum theory explained in the preceding chapter has provided a mathematical description of the pattern of events which is believed to be complete and perfect. For it enables us—in principle at least—to predict every possible phenomenon of physics, and not one of its predictions has so far proved to be wrong. In a sense, then, we might say that theoretical physics has achieved the main purpose of its being, and that nothing remains but to work out the details.
In a recent number of Blackfriars (July, 1949) Dr A. W. Gledhill has discussed very competently some aspects of the statistical method as used in modern physics. He has tried to show there ‘that modern physical theory does not contradict the principle of causality’. Having made a study of this subject over quite a number of years, the writer, while agreeing with some of Dr Gledhill’s conclusions, feels nevertheless that there are a few points which have not been covered as adequately as the importance of the subject for modern philosophy seems to warrant. In order to understand the controversy about the validity or non-validity of the principle of causality, which has been initiated by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, it is necessary to realise, first of all, that when a physicist speaks about causality, he usually does not mean the same thing as a scholastic philosopher. In scholastic philosophy one distinguishes different kinds of causes, such as the material, the efficient, the final, as well as the formal and exemplary causes. The classical physicist, on the other hand, since the time of Galileo, admits only efficient causes. Let us therefore give a brief sketch of the development of this concept of scientific causality and show the reasons for this limitation. The purpose of a scientific theory is the prediction of events among the natural objects which form the field of enquiry of the particular science concerned. Evidently, the more certain the prediction, the better the theory on which it is based.
Primitive man must have found nature singularly puzzling and intricate. The simplest phenomena could be trusted to recur indefinitely; an unsupported body invariably fell, a stone thrown into water sank, while a piece of wood floated. Yet other more complicated phenomena shewed no such uniformity—the lightning struck one tree in the grove while its neighbour of similar growth and equal size escaped unharmed; one month the new moon brought fair weather, the next month foul. Confronted with a natural world which was to all appearances as capricious as himself, man's first impulse was to create Nature in his own image; he attributed the seemingly erratic and unordered course of the universe to the whims and passions of gods, or of benevolent or malevolent lesser spirits. Only after much study did the great principle of causation emerge. In time it was found to dominate the whole of inanimate nature: a cause which could be completely isolated in its action was found invariably to produce the same effect. What happened at any instant did not depend on the volitions of extraneous beings, but followed inevitably by inexorable laws from the state of things at the preceding instant. And this state of things had in turn been inevitably determined by an earlier state, and so on indefinitely, so that the whole course of events had been unalterably determined by the state in which the world found itself at the first instant of its history; once this had been fixed, nature could move only along one road to a predestined end.
The main idea consists in researching the existence of certain characteristics of nature similar to human reasonability and purposeful actions, originating and rigorously inferable from the postulates of quantum mechanics as well as from those of special and general relativity. The pathway of the “free-will theorems” proved by Conway and Kochen in 2006 and 2009 is followed and pioneered further. Those natural reasonability and teleology are identified as a special subject called “God” and studyable by “quantum theology”, a scientific counterpart of classical theology as far as the latter endeavors to justify rationally God (without quotation marks) postulated by religion, but meaning in the present study, first of all, Christianity. The suggested “quantum theology” is situated in the historical opposition and conflict of science and religion in Modernity and its reflection in Heidegger’s conception of “ontotheology”. The conception of “ontomathematics” introduced in previous papers to unite and unify physics, mathematics, and philosophy is reinterpreted in the present context to be conservatively generalized in a way to include “quantum theology”. Two conceptions, “locality” and “nonlocality”, originating initially from physics and especially, from theory of entanglement and quantum information, are also generalized ontomathematically, and thus in relation to the newly introduced “quantum theology”. The “quantum theology” subject of “God” is juxtaposed with God of religion and billions of believers all over the world. Husserl’s conception of “philosophy as a rigorous science” is considered to be generalized now to theology as quantum theology, particularly by the phenomenon (in the sense of his “phenomenology”) of “God”, or by an “epoché” to whether God exists or not. The research of the phenomenon of “God” is extended to the conception of the “totality” being inherent for philosophy, especially for classical German philosophy preceding Husserl’s phenomenology. Those sequences for philosophy implied by the introduction of quantum theology are investigated further, on the pathway of ontomathematics, also in relation to what “God” should mean for today’s physics and mathematics. The option and research field of “experimental quantum theology” is discussed as a direct corollary from quantum theology though being sacrilegious as for classical theology. The concluding section reflects in a more loose way on the relation of “God” for quantum theology to God for religion and billions of believers all over the world.
Bohr is said to have remarked that anybody who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it. No physicist, however, challenges its practical usefulness in predicting experimental results and providing an explanatory framework for an enormous range of study. Nevertheless, more thoughtful physicists have been astonished and disturbed by what is implied when attempts are made to interpret its meaning. As a result a variety of ingenious, and sometimes bizarre, schemes have been devised since its inception in order to make these implications more acceptable to the scientific mind. Some of these schemes have resulted in proposals which appear stranger than the problems they have been designed to resolve. After some sixty years there is no consensus of opinion upon the solution of the epistemological problems posed. Indeed the debate keeps on resurfacing in the scientific literature and continues to generate library shelves of books. Some progress, however, has been made and the late John Bell himself and the experimental work of Alain Aspect have demonstrated that some epistemological positions cannot be sustained.
COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF THE HEISENBERG PRINCIPLE I T HE Heisenberg uncertainty principle, like its rival theory of relativity/ has been one of the truly crucial phases in the physics of our day~ It did not, like the discovery of a new element or the Maxwell equations, simply indent the story of classical physics for a new paragraph. It was not only a new chapter but a new book. Detected, in the words of Heisenberg himself, when physics became self-critical, the principle is a statement of what is observable-like its contemporary, the theory of relativity. It was anew advance in method, so revolutionary indeed that physics has virtually lost meaning as content and become synonymous , as logical empiricism amply indicates, with mere rules of procedure. That science is developing into a system of logic, combining the Cartesian stress on clearness with the Kantian regulative idea, actually confirms a contention of traditional philosophy. It reveals that once we deny the colors and sounds, the life, lights, and purpose in our universe-as pure scientific method actually does-we are fated to deny much more than quality. Quality is in the order of form, substance, and being. The moment quality is banished from the real world, by the same 1 That all is not as peaceful and unified in physics as the layman sometimes believes can be seen in the deep cleavage between quantum and relativity mechanics. For the first, the exact specification of space (position) and time (velocity, momentum) has no meaning, while in relativity theory such exact description is the only meaning that can be had. Despite the efforts 'of leading physicists, including Dirac, to unite the two theories, the contradiction is so profound that one of these systems must eventually be abandoned or, more probably, both of them will be superseded. The recent work .of Schroedinger and apparently also of Einstei~ himself are directed to extend the general theory of relativity, making the current theory a special case just as Newtonian physics is a special case of present relativity mechanics. 474 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF THE HEISENBERG PRINCIPLE 475 decree being itself-because it is an immediate, non-inertial (formal) thing like quality-is driven into its only possible exile, nothingness. It is not surprising then that, after modern physics· has finished its task, the universe should not only be emptied of its lights, its fragrance, its sweetness, and its music but should also be without being and without existence. The uncertainty principle has been much debated in modern thought. Its impact has brought a sad end to the pride of 19th century science since it prevents a complete knowledge of anything at all by shading into the darkness at least one of the two major factors that specify it. Shortly after the principle was born it was hailed by various authors as a proof of free will, of the possibility of religion, and of non-mechanistic concepts in biology. In a more consistent and challenging sense, it has often been taken to refute what the physicist calls causality and what the philosopher calls the order of nature. The fact of the matter is that if the senses alone supply knowledge, truly only one thing at a time can be apprehended. If Hume was right in philosophy, so is Heisenberg. But when sensism yields to an intellectual insight into reality, it is easy to refute the scientist's claim to dethrone the doctrine of nature's order which he could never detect, even in classical physics, by pointerreadings .2 But whatever the fate of the Heisenberg principle in cosmology , it has had a most fruitful career in the field of physics. To Heisenberg himself, the principle was a point of departure for an original development of quantum mechanics based on the " uncertainty " of position and momentum,.: 3 If, for example, measurements are made, under a microscope, of the position of an electron, the photon (light-particle), which impinges on the eye and thus conveys the required knowledge to the physicist, has had to collide with the electron, thus imparting an impact known as the Compton recoil. When • For ·a discussion of the order of nature, cf. J. Marling: The...
ENERAL philosophy claims to be the critical subject which lays down for all of us what we may be allowed to think, and yet it has played no part whatever in the great revolutions of human thought of the present century-those connected with relativity and the quantum theory. It might have been expected that the scientists would have been constantly consulting the philosophers as to the legitimacy of their various speculations, but nothing of the kind has happened. Since no one can dispense with some sort of metaphysic, each scientist has made one for himself, and no doubt they contain many crudities, but it would seem that a deep interest in metaphysic is a disadvantage rather than an advantage to the physicist-at least I have the impression that those of my friends who are most inclined to speculate on the ultimate things appear to be the ones whose scientific work is most hampered by doing so. Now I propose to risk a similar indiscretion. I want to embody in it the practical philosophy of a physicist, and I do not mean it as an attack on the pure philosophers, who are very reasonable people, only chargeable with the minor offence of not having made me want to read their books! I had better begin by stating shortly the ideas I intend to discuss. There is a notable contrast between the way we think about things and the way we think we ought to think about them.