The thing about scientific knowledge, and discovery, is that they have real effects on what we believe, and how we behave. As people say, “Elections have consequences !” Well, so do scientific facts.
But there is a great difference between the facts themselves and the ways we interpret those facts, which are the theories we devise to make sense of them.
The legacy commonly associated with Isaac Newton allows us to predict the behavior of ordinary objects at our everyday scale. Knowing the dimensions of billiard balls, for example, and the force and direction with which the cue strikes the ball (plus resistance of the table-surface, angles, distances etc. etc.), we can in fact predict which shots will sink and which will not. And this knowledge brought on a wonderful change in human thinking : no more gremlins ; no more magic ; only reliable Laws of Nature. It is impossible to overestimate the benefits gained in that first Golden Age of Science.
But over time, a new problem arose concerning the nature of the human mind, because, if the operation of the mind is dependent upon the brain (as it does appear to be), then our thoughts and actions would, in theory, be just as predictable as Newtonian billiard balls. In fact, they would not only be predicable, but “determined” : rolling reliably in harmony with present and past conditions — cause-and-effect — all the way back to the first whack of the Great Celestial Pool Cue.
Unfortunately, as we shall see elsewhere, this view of reality has some very uncomfortable moral and philosophical implications which run counter to all that the human species has always assumed to be true. For as mentioned: what is believed to be fact has great consequences. And in this case, by a strict reading of the “facts”, the human being — and all the universe as well — was seemingly reduced to something akin to a giant wind-up toy.
Einstein also, with his portrayal of time as a dimension equivalent to those of physical space, likewise encouraged the determinist view. The Universe, he suggested, could be described as a sort of eternal, multi-dimensional object, through which an ideal observer could progress, at will, backwards or forwards in time, just as we move back and forth in the three spatial dimensions ; that our experience of time, as an evolving narrative, was nothing more than a particularity of our mode of perception. In the end, then, popular interpretation of Newton, powerfully reinforced by Einstein, became a sort of intellectual bible (at or around the first quarter of the last century), and has not ceased to percolate into the public mind ever since, with often disastrous effects on the human psyche.
For a long time, in fact, only the existence of consciousness, which has no physical signature – though largely ignored – remained to dispute this theory.
Happily though, into this dismal circumstance, came the discovery that physical events on a smaller scale — that is the quantum scale populated by sub-atomic particles and their associated waves — can not be demonstrated to behave like Newtonian billiard balls, and therefore, do not conform (or at least do not necessarily conform), to Einstein’s idea of a perfect static whole.
Now naturally, at this point, there has been a great temptation to cry “Aha ! the universe is not just physical after all” and all sorts of wild speculation has ensued. But we do not actually “know” these things. These, also, are only interpretations of fact, and not facts themselves.
What we actually see, today, is a theoretical stand-off. On the one hand, we have people who would like to introduce (or re-introduce) all sorts of claims regarding the role of consciousness in the Universe (of which the present author represents a very cautious example), and on the other, we have a massive scientific consensus based mostly on prejudice, inertia — and fear of the unknown — many of whose proponents are extremely loath to abandon a (once) dominant world view which they were led to swallow uncritically with their first milk of knowledge, and which they have been encouraged to repeat (with the utmost confidence) ever since. Nonetheless, all must now evolve in an environment of competing — yet unverified — theories. It is therefore crucial to distinguish that which we know (observable fact) from that which we do not (theory)
First, we know that real billiard balls will reliably fall into (or miss) pockets, on real tables, when they are propelled over short distances under known conditions.
Secondly, we know that the sub-atomic wave-particles of which all our common objects are constituted, do not follow such rules : They are absolutely predictable in the aggregate, according to the probabilistic math of quantum mechanics, but, as far as anybody has been able to tell, individual quantum events have no explanation. Apparently, according to simple observation, reality is capriciously evolving as a series of tiny, statistically reasonable, chance events.
And thirdly, beginning in the 1960’s with the mathematical descriptions of Edward Lorenz (and subsequent) it is becoming clear that inexplicable, individual, sub-atomic events will hugely influence even billiard balls over long distances (and whole solar systems over planetary stretches of time), not to mention hyper-complex processes in the human mind – and thus human behavior – right here, and right now.
Therefore, as concerns the deterministic dimension of the intellectual stand-off described above, the debate is no longer equal : For, suddenly, after at least a hundred years of confident condescension, the burden is now upon the determinist, to tell us why he believes as he does !
When Bell’s Theorem, for instance, reveals that reality is either non-local, or that information must be travelling faster than the speed of light (upsetting Einstein) – and when theorists arrive to speculate that an “absolutely determined” universe would explain these uncomfortable facts ; their adversaries may now respond in the same way that scientific opponents of unverifiable dogmas have always done : “Why should we believe this particular unsupported proposition rather than any other ?”
Or, as common traditional wisdom would respond (to the claim that quantum entanglement could be explained IF the Universe were absolutely determinate) :
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride ;
And if turnips were watches, I’d wear one by my side !” — anonymous 17th
Seriously, this is not a small thing. The role of consciousness has not been vindicated. Physical determinism has not been chased from the field. But these two interpretations are now at an equal disadvantage with regards to verified fact. And that, to use the sensational vocabulary of the twenty-first century, is a paradigm shift.