Paying Attention To The Sky

The fourth theme of the materialist’s story was the determinism of physical law. Everything in the history of physics up until the last century seemed to support this idea. All the laws discovered — those of mechanics, gravity, and electromagnetism — were deterministic in character. If anything seemed securely established it was physical determinism.

Perhaps there was nothing more counter to Christian anthropology than the notion of Man held captive to a deterministic universe. Christian anthropology posits a sensual-intellectual human nature:

“Penetration to the deeper essence of things, not perceptible to the senses is possible only to the reasoning mind. The reasoning mind alone can relate itself to the whole of reality. To be able to establish an inner link with all creation is precisely what distinguishes the higher level on which man moves from the essentially lower level of the animal. Furthermore, only the reasoning mind is capable of an act of free will; and free will also distinguishes man essentially from all creatures lower than himself. Without freedom of choice and decision man could neither sin nor be converted nor be sanctified. However, the use of our mind requires the use of the senses to start with. Purely intellectual knowledge is not possible for man. Yet God so created our sensual-intellectual human nature as to make us able to see Him in the Beatific Vision in eternal life. The ultimate reason for man’s distinctive difference is the spiritual character of his soul.”
What Catholics Believe Josef Pieper and Heinz Raskop

However, in the 1920s the ground rumbled under the feet of physicists. Determinism was swept away in the quantum revolution. According to the principles of quantum theory, even complete information about the state of a physical system at one time does not determine its future behavior, except in a probabilistic sense.

This was terribly shocking to physicists. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of an exact science is its ability to predict outcomes. So shocking was this twist in the plot that several of the makers of the quantum revolution, including de Broglie and Schrödinger, were reluctant to accept this aspect of it. Einstein was never reconciled to the loss of determinism. “God,” he famously said, “does not play dice.” There have been many attempts to restore determinism to physics by modifying, reformulating, or reinterpreting quantum theory in some way. So far, however, it seems unlikely that the old classical determinism will be restored.

There are many who argue, nonetheless, that the indeterminacy of quantum theory does not create an opening or a space for free will to operate. They argue that the basic building blocks of the human brain, such as neurons, are too large for quantum indeterminacy to play a significant role. At this point, who can say? So little is known about the brain. What we can say is that there was for a long time a strong argument from the fundamental character of physical law against the possibility of free will, and this argument can no longer be so simply made. To quote Hermann Weyl again, from the same 1931 lecture:

“We may say that there exists a world, causally closed and determined by precise laws, but… the new insight which modern [quantum] physics affords…opens several ways of reconciling personal freedom with natural law. It would be premature, however, to propose a definite and complete solution of the problem…We must await the further development of science, perhaps for centuries, perhaps for thousands of years, before we can design a true and detailed picture of the interwoven texture of Matter, Life, and Soul. But the old classical determinism of Hobbes and Laplace need not oppress us longer.”

Yale professor of computer science David Gelernter argues that at least one part of the universe does have a purpose: we human beings do, and around us, the earth that made us possible. And what is that purpose?

Namely to defeat and rise above our animal natures; to create goodness, beauty and holiness where only physics and animal life once existed; to create what might be (if we succeed) the only tiny pinprick of goodness in the universe —  which is otherwise (so far as we know) morally null and void. If no other such project exists anywhere in the cosmos, our victory would change the nature of the universe. If there are similar projects elsewhere, more power to them; but our own task remains unchanged.

As we can see from these comments, even the strictest scientists need to put the findings of science in a metaphysical context. When they are faced with questions about meaning, purpose, and cause, they cannot help themselves. Some speculate that Causes may be hidden within other causes like Russian stacking dolls. Others speculate that the entire universe should be considered as an uncreated cause, the first cause, of its own existence. However, when they do metaphysics they invite comparison to the inquiries of ancient and medieval thinkers, who moved more carefully on such matters.

Michael Novak argues in “No One Sees God:” “What we do know is that concrete things exist. We live in the midst of them. And things do not hold themselves in existence; one by one, their period in existence is brief. That fact poses a problem to our inquiring intelligence.

It is entirely possible that one form of existence evolved from another over eons of time, in the way that the new Darwinians picture human history. Aristotle’s philosophical argument for the reality of an imperishable existent is actually consistent with a Darwinian exposition of how things, once they came into existence in some form, perhaps as a primal ocean, got to where they are today. Can there be an imperishable Existent that infuses temporary existence into all perishable existents? If so, that fact is consistent with theories of either evolution or creation, or both. The philosophy in question is pre-biblical. It springs from wonderment at the marvel of coining into existence, and exiting out from it.

The fact it rests upon is this one: You and I unarguably exist

The mind wants to understand not only the how of that fact, not just the brute fact, but the source of existence that makes you and me to be. In the argument of Aquinas about the “unmoved mover,” the key step is an empirical, undeniable one “But, indubitably, things do move.” The fact of movement is the crucial datum. The question it awakens is “What greater mover put moving things into motion?” What is it that lifts things out of the world of mere concepts, mere possibilities, into the concrete world of perishable existents? Things don’t just come into being by themselves. Especially highly intelligible things don’t. Some intelligence suffuses them. (Otherwise, detective novels would not grip us.)

For those trained in flatter ways of thinking, this is all ridiculous metaphysical speculation, mere words, unresolvable by empirical tests.

Yet if it is true, it plants an intelligent source of existence at the nerve center of every existing thing in the whole blooming evolutionary panorama. It links each intelligible event to an active intelligence, which understands all the things that exist. This philosophy is wholly compatible with science, even though its mode of arguing is not a subset of scientific arguments. Rather, scientific arguments are a subset of other forms of rational argument.

This philosophy is much more intellectually satisfying than the alternatives. It rests upon and protects the close link between intelligence (greater than our own) and the intelligible existents that come into our ken. It forces us to imagine intelligence “all the way down,” and to rule no questions out. It helps to explain the source of our own unrestricted drive to inquire. It suggests that that drive is in harmony with the world as it is isomorphic (vocab: different in ancestry, but having the same form or appearance) with it.”

Another post on quantum theory here:

http://payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/09/08/a-spiritual-reality-veiled-from-us/