Far\u00a0from clarifying their view of the universe, scientists found that all\u00a0matter ultimately consisted of transient patterns of energy that were continually metamorphosing themselves into\u00a0new patterns. As the American physicist Fritjof Capra\u00a0summarised in his book “The Tao of Physics”:<\/p>\n
“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<\/em>.”<\/p>\n 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.”<\/p>\n Hard on the heels of this disturbing\u00a0revelation 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.<\/p>\n Heisenberg proved that it was\u00a0impossible, even in theory,\u00a0to 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.<\/p>\n 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\u00a0which effectively changes the thing that is being observed. The impact of this uncertainty principle on the traditional outlook of science was profoundly disturbing.<\/p>\n 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:<\/p>\n “In the good old days it could boldly predict the future. But what of now?\u00a0 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\u00a0predict the detailed future.”<\/em> (The Strange World of the\u00a0Quantum)<\/p>\n 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\u00a0Sir James Jeans wrote in 1930 in his book “The Mysterious Universe”:<\/p>\n “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<\/em>.”<\/p>\n
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