Reflections on Paul Davies' God and the New Physics
By Robert C. W. Ettinger
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Many years ago, when I was taking courses in quantum theory, I had a lot of questions concerning apparent paradoxes, which my teachers were unable to answer. One of these questions concerned the implication, in quantum theory, that actions in the present could change the past, or at least determine it.
It goes as follows. According to the theory, a particle does not have simultaneously well defined values of--for example--position and momentum. If the observer chooses to make an accurate measurement of a particle's momentum, then the position must have a large uncertainty. Thus the observer's choice determines a range of possibilities, for example, of the particle's location at various times in the past; certain events in the past can be ruled out, ex post facto, by the experimenter's decision in the present.
Also, certain alternatives can be ruled in; if I look at a succession of particles, and choose to localize them very accurately, then I assure that some of them will have specified large momenta; this may allow, or even compel, certain types of interactions in the past of the particles.
Seem a bit bizarre? Well, the "new physics" according to Dr. Davies (Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England) may even suggest the creation of the universe by the retroactive effect of the thoughts of modern living people. Really. One reaction is that this gives a new dimension to the old question, "What are friends for?"
Let me back up now and indicate what the book tries to do, before giving my notion of its successes and failures.
According to the author, he sets out to look at the Big Four questions of existence: "Why are the laws of nature what they are? Why does the universe consist of the things it does? How did those things arise? How did the universe achieve its organization?" He proposes to show emerging tentative answers, and that science may offer a "surer path to God than religion."
On the credit side, he gives some brilliant analogies whereby the layman may get some notion of the significance of arcane theories of modern physics, and he presents some new experimental results which even most philosophers do not yet know, he thinks.
Actually, all these results and ideas have been widely reported in newspapers and magazines, and it would be a sleepy philosoper indeed who hasn't noticed.
But the presentation is well worth the price ($16.95 for about 250 pages).. Even though my discussion will focus mainly on differences of opinion, I think the book as a whole is stimulating and rewarding.
One of the rewards is a splendid chapter on free will and determinism, which emphasizes a point that ought to be obvious but apparently isn't--that any proposed alternative to the rule of natural law, such as random elements, decreases human dignity rather than abets it. (If the present and future are determined even partly by chance, then I may be deprived of the fruits of my actions, and I may not even think or act according to my character.)
Much of the religious discussion is fairly routine. But there is a pretty good look at some aspects of the possible nature of God, and there is a hint of Gerald Feinberg's notion that God may be--or become--a sort of universal supermind, not identical with the universe, nor localized, nor outside it, but its highest aspect, perhaps bearing somewhat the same relation to the universe that the human mind bears to the human body.
The chapters on time and on elementary particles are perhaps the least successful and interesting. The time chapter just doesn't say much, because we don't know much. The particle chapter is unenlightening, and probably intensely boring to a layman, unless he enjoys reading the strange names and peculiar habits of the animals in the sub-atomic zoo.
There is a discussion of the nature of personal identity, which includes thought experiments similar to some of mine in 1962, but he draws a conclusion I have shown to be unsound--that identity resides in the pattern of personality and memory, so that, for example, a robot with my personality and memories would be myself.
The liveliest and most provocative segments concern the book's main theme, the importance of holism--that systems must be viewed in the large and not in reductionist terms of interactions of their smallest components; that the large may determine the small as well as the other way round, and even that the "result" may determine the "cause" and that self-reference is at the root of many paradoxes. Much of this is excellent, but the author also seems to work both sides of the fence and at times is confusing, if not confused.
At one point he mentions certain logical "paradoxes" such as the one about the Barber of Seville: "If the barber shaves everyone who does not shave himself, then who shaves the barber?" There are many similar ones, such as: "Statement A says that Statement B is true. Statement B says that Statement A is false." Is either statement true? Is either false? There are also similar "paradoxes" in set theory, especially involving the hypothetical "set of all sets".
Actually, these "paradoxes" have been deflated many times by many people. For example, common sense will tell you that the barber isn't really a problem; it is just a case of trying to draw a conclusion from a contradictory premise or inadmissible definition; GIGO (garbage in, garbage out).
As for statements A and B above, the "paradox" arises because the statements are not meaningful; they are only conditionally meaningful, depending on the character of the referent, which in this case fails. Dr. Davies himself points out the circularity trap: for example, if a dictionary defines "big" as meaning "large" and "large" as meaning "big", then neither statement conveys anything unless the reader has a prior knowledge of one of the words. The parallel is not exact, but the paradoxes are not mysterious. (For more technical ways to prick these balloons, especially those involving sets, see for example The Anatomy of Mathematics, Kershner & Wilcox, Ronald Press, N.Y., 1950.)
Again, the author at several points makes very clear the fact that there is nothing wrong with materialism-reductionism, nothing about it that conflicts with holism; it is just a question of choosing the most useful mode of description in each case. Yet in other passages he gives the distinct impression that there is a conflict, and that holism is the more modern, and enlightened view, while reductionism is the "nothing-buttery" view (a man is "nothing but" a pile of atoms, etc.).
So his efforts to draw parallels to the quantum theory boot-strap universe mainly go lame; but that hypothetical biteyourself-in-the-butt universe is interesting enough in itself.
The nub of the matter is that quantum uncertainties (such as the failure of a particle to have simultaneously well defined values of position and momentum) seem to leave a random factor at the foundations of reality. Now, it might seem that if one can accept a causeless universe.--as many scientists are tentatively willing to do--it would be no more difficult to accept causeless subatomic events; yet many minds do find this concept much more obnoxious, and some of the greatest, including Einstein, Schrodinger, Planck, and de Broglie, believed there must be "hidden variables" or unknown laws at a level below the quantum theory, But the majority of physicists for a long time have swallowed quantum theory whole, and Dr. Davies tells of a recent experiment in France that seems to put "paid" to any local hidden-variables theory.
Alain Aspect and colleagues at the univerity of Paris performed an experiment in some ways resembling the thought-experiment of Einstein, Rosen, and Podolsky many years go, which was supposed to show a paradox in quantum theory by requiring propagation of a disturbance faster than light. But the Aspect experiment seems to show that physical influences can be transmitted faster than light--or else the quantum uncertainty linkages between certain particles are just magic, no more explainable than the universe as a whole is explainable.
For some reason, Dr. Davies seems to rule out the explanation of action-at-a-distance, or faster-than-light effects, even though he does, elsewhere, mention Gerald Feinberg's tachyons (hypothetical faster-than-light particles) as being possible. (Special relativity does not really rule out faster-than-light speeds: it only rules them out for ordinary particles; some particles can only go at sub-light speeds, others at the speed of light, and "tachyons" only at speeds faster than light.)
Although Prof. Davies does not mention them, paradoxes of action-at-a-distance also occurred in relativity theory, antedating the uncertainty principle. I think it was Ernst Mach who pointed out that centrifugal force effects in rotating bodies must result from interaction with the universe as a whole, and this seems to require action at a distance
So that's how the issue stands at the moment: probably no local hidden variables, but possibly action-at-a-distance hidden variables. Assuming the Establishment is right, and there are no hidden variables, no detailed determinism, then a further consequence may be--according to the author's drift--a kind of "mind over matter".
The claim is that a conscious observer must finalize the well-defined aspects of a measurement--that an atom, for example, remains a vague kind of probability wave, in effect, until an experimental apparatus makes a definite fix and a sentient mind notices.
As far as I can see, this is purest hogwash. If an atom, or a photon, makes a mark on a photographic plate, then the atom's position is fixed, and it is totally irrelevant whether a human ever looks at the plate. Then how, you ask, do the distinguished Eugen Wigner and others come up with the conscious-observer requirement? This results – again, as far as I can see--merely from an overformalized interpretation of measurement theory. Sense impressions are taken as the primary data, the fundamental reality, not only for psychology but for physics.
But you don't have to believe that to believe in Schrodinger's cat, which manages to be alive and dead at the same time. (And not in the sense of cryonics.)
To be and not to be, that is the statement of quantum theory. Until an observation experiment or interaction) fixes the value of some observable parameter, a particle remains a kind of ghost, being partly here and partly there, potentially this and potentially that. But sometimes small differences produce large results: if an atom is here instead of there, it might trigger an apparatus that releases a vial of cyanide and kills poor Schrodinger's cat, penned in with the apparatus. Now notice carefully: until the atom makes its "decision" it is both here and there, and the unavoidable consequence is that the cat is both dead and alive, a brief time in the future.
One way out of this particular dilemma is the far-out hypothesis of Everett, Wheeler, and Graham, on which we reported a couple of years back. This notion makes all possible outcomes of quantum uncertainty into reality, so that the universe splits into stupendous numbers of alternate realities zillions of times every nanosecond. As Dr. Davies Points out, there could in principle be no interaction between these universes, so the hypothesis is unverifiable, hence many would say meaningless.
Getting back to Wigner's mind-over-matter Davies carries this to a cosmological conclusion, viz., that perhaps the universe is not exactly causeless, but a bootstrap affair: it causes itself, in the sense that sentient minds can retroactively exert physical effects on the remote past. This is holism with a vengeance--not only can the large produce the small which creates the large, but also the future creates the past which causes the future. Furthermore, creation of the physical universe includes the creation of time and space, and perhaps also creation of the laws of physics and the values of physical constants.
If all this seems wild and goofy, it is partly the author's fault; at times he seems to endorse every speculation he reports, even though at other times he is commendably clear and down to earth. But we must also remember that the universe is wild and goofy, probably much more so than even these speculations hint--but in very different ways.
Unfortunately, the book tends by its tone and slightly garbled discussion to give credence to those many laymen, and not a few scientists, who are trying to make the "new physics" a kind of mysticism. (Robert A. Wilson is one of the laymen.) They try to use Godel's incompleteness theorem (somewhat related to the "paradoxes" of set theory) and Bell's Inequality (related to the Paris experiment of Alain Aspect) to say, in effect, that anything can happen and spirit can make it happen. This is pitiful and regrettable.
But there is much, much more in the book, and I repeat that it is well worth buying. But before signing off I must make my main complaint, the obvious one.
Dr. Davies hasn't exactly answered his "Big Four" questions of existence, but that isn't the problem; the problem lies in his notion of what is important. The real questions of existence are: "Why am I underpaid? Why am I underloved? Why do my feet hurt? Why am I under sentence of death, and what can I about it?"
Like virtually every other intellectual, Dr. Davies agrees that we will probably learn how to do anything and everything that is not ruled out by the laws of nature, including the remaking of ourselves. But he conveniently relegates most of these accomplishments to the remote future, depriving himself of personal hope but gaining the luxury of being just a kibitzer.
Still, he isn't dead yet, and maybe there is hope for him too.
R.C.W. Ettinger
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