The Collapse of the Giant Machine
Up until the onset of the 20th century, scientists believed that the universe existed as a sort of Giant Machine, in which objects moved in space according to the known laws of the universe. Everything was considered to be bound by the law of cause and effect. What that meant was that nothing could happen in life (an effect) unless it was preceded by a cause. And these effects were bound by mathematical laws which predicted with certainty exactly what would happen in every case.
As we have seen in previous instalments, this comfortable view of the universe was dealt a crippling blow by the atom smashing experiments of the 20th century. In these collision experiments conducted in cloud chambers, scientists discovered to their dismay that their search for the fundamental constituents of matter led them farther and farther away from the simple explanation they were seeking.
In place of the original three nucleons (protons, neutrons and electrons), scientists were confronted by literally hundreds of new and unexpected particles, none of which were either fundamental or elementary. For when they were bombarded by other particles, they generated yet more particles. The quest for the origin of matter led them to the realization that all matter resolved itself ultimately into energy. As Gary Zukav explains:
“The search for the ultimate stuff of the universe ends with the discovery that there isn’t any. If there is any ultimate stuff of the universe, it is pure energy, but subatomic particles are not ‘made of’ energy, they are energy.” (Original emphasis) (The Dancing Wu Li Masters)
Far from clarifying their view of the universe, scientists found that all matter ultimately consisted of transient patterns of energy that were continually metamorphosing themselves into new patterns. As the American physicist Fritjof Capra summarised in his book “The Tao of Physics”:
“Matter has appeared in these experiments as completely unstable. All particles can be transmuted into other particles, they can be created from energy and vanish into energy. In this world, classical concepts like “elementary particle”, “material substance”, or “isolated object” have lost their meaning; the whole universe appears as a dynamic web of inseparable energy patterns.”
But if scientists were at a loss to explain the fundamental nature of matter, worse was to follow. For it soon became apparent that there was no such thing as a particle at all. As Werner Heisenberg, one of the architects of this new world of subatomic physics pointed out: “A particle is not a thing”. Henry Stapp of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory went further: ” An elementary particle is not an independently existing, analyzable entity. It is, in essence, a set of relationships that reach outward to other things.”
Hard on the heels of this disturbing revelation came another shattering blow to the predictable nature of the world, which had long been one of the pillars of classical science. It was Werner Heisenberg who demonstrated that one of the hallowed beliefs of early scientists such as Galileo and Newton was fatally flawed. They had believed that it was possible to observe nature without disturbing it in any way. Once precise measurements of the existing state of an object were known, all future states of that object could then be predicted.
Heisenberg proved that it was impossible, even in theory, to make any measurement in nature without at the same time altering the nature of the thing that was being measured. Measurement, he claimed, would always involve a degree of uncertainty. So if we discover the exact position of the electron we can say nothing of its momentum. And if we determine its precise momentum, we cannot establish its position.
So the more we know about the one, the less we can say about the other. No matter what we observe in nature, it is impossible to observe it scientifically without at the same time altering it, for the very act of observing so tiny a thing as an electron is to subject it to some type of energy which effectively changes the thing that is being observed. The impact of this uncertainty principle on the traditional outlook of science was profoundly disturbing.
For if it was impossible, even in principle, to measure both the exact position and momentum of any particle, then it would also be impossible to predict its future state. The happy predictable world of Laplace now lay shattered in ruins. Banesh Hoffmann summarised the realization that now dawned on the world of physics:
“In the good old days it could boldly predict the future. But what of now? To predict the future we must know the present, and the present is not knowable, for in trying to know it we inevitably alter it… Science had suffered a drastic and fundamental change without at first perceiving it….Its proudest boast, its most cherished illusion had been taken away from it. It had suddenly grown old and wise. It had at last realized it never had possessed the ability to predict the detailed future.” (The Strange World of the Quantum)
Yet the collapse of the concept of the Giant Machine was not something to be feared. for it carried within it a vision that was pregnant with potential, for it offered humanity an avenue of escape from the shackles of deterministic science. As the English physicist Sir James Jeans wrote in 1930 in his book “The Mysterious Universe”:
“Probably the majority of physicists expect that in some way the laws of strict causation will in the end be restored to its old place in the natural world. So far it has not been restored, with the result that, up to the present at least, the picture of the universe contains more room than did the old mechanical picture for life and consciousness to exist within the picture itself, together with the attributes we commonly associate with them, such as free will, and the capacity to make the universe in some small degree different by our experience.”
