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MORE ON
LIGHT
Pre-scientific concepts of
light
I
would like in this chapter to go back to some opinions on light that were held
long before the emergence of modern science. This is to the period around A.D.
350, when philosophers were endeavoring to rationalize the account of creation
in Genesis, and before the dogma of the church had set in and discouraged
speculation.
According
to I. P. Sheldon Williams, St. Basil of Caesarea, writing in about A.D. 370,
distinguished between the intelligible and the sensible world. (1) The
intelligible world was outside time. The sensible world shared with it "an
intelligible matter which Basil identifies with the light which illuminates the
material world and is therefore the common ground of the whole universe
intelligible and sensible."
It
follows [says St. Basil] that light is of a more general nature than time, for
time is found only in the sensible world. . . . Because light is not limited to
time it was universally distributed at the moment of its creation, as it fills
the whole room in which a lamp is kindled. Between the intelligible and the
sensible worlds the firmament acts as a barrier, of which the solidity implied
by its name is such that light may pass through it (but in a diluted form), but
time cannot break out into the world above.
Now
this is a most remarkable statement because it recognizes that time does not
exist in the world of light, a fact known to science only since the advent of
relativity!
The
recognition of a basic division between an "intelligible" and a
"sensible" world is common to all prescientific thought, and the
belief in an intelligible world began its decline only when comprehensive
theories, like that of universal gravitation, apparently made it possible to
explain the phenomenal world in mechanical, or more correctly, reductive, terms.
While Newton believed that the regularities of planetary motion were evidence
for the divine, Laplace, his successor, did not. In answer to Napoleon, who had
commented that Laplace had written his Celestial Mechanics with no
reference to its Maker, Laplace replied: "Sire, I have no need of that
hypothesis."
This
has been the trend in the philosophy of science ever since. But a careful
examination of the findings of science, as distinct from its philosophy,
will disclose that at the true frontier of science this trend has reversed:
as we pointed out in the preceding chapter, the more deeply the physicist prods
into the foundations, the less certainty he finds. It is scientism and not
science that still clings to the old determinism. It is the behaviorist, the
sociologist, who "any day now" will discover the "laws" of
human behavior. The layman too has endorsed the credo of determinism, perhaps
because he feels that it is scientific, but also because it gives him security,
it exorcises the demons of change.
The
physicist, who was originally responsible for the doctrine (which Blake called
"Newton's sleep"), has been awakened by his own experiments to the
recognition that determinism as a doctrine is untenable. First alerted by
Heisenberg's teaching that the fundamental particle cannot be observed without
disturbing it, he has found uncertainty the rule rather than the exception, and
he knows that he can predict only in the statistical sense; he cannot predict
for individuals.
What
is remarkable is that this fundamental turnabout has not been more widely
disseminated. Eddington discussed the change from determinism in his delightful
fable of "Canticles." The story goes that a scholar mistakes
"Canticles" for a person, about whom he writes papers and to whom he
attributes various works. After some years the scholar discovers that the word
means "songs," and tries to correct the mistake he has made, only to
find that other scholars have adopted his brain child and resent his effort to
do away with their idol. They attack him with the criticism that he has no proof
that "Canticles," the person, did not exist.
In
the same way, determinism, invented on the basis of a misunderstanding, and now
known to be false in principle, has been made policy, and its adherents
challenge others to disprove it. Robert Oppenheimer observed in 1956:
.
. . the worst of all possible misunderstandings would occur if psychology should
be influenced to model itself after a physics which is not there any more, which
has been quite outdated. (2)
Nonetheless,
this has happened, and the pundits with the false dogma are making the most
noise.
We should not
underrate the difficulty involved. The determinism of the 19th century made a
deep impact on our thinking, not because it was materialistic, but because it
gave sanction to the rational mind to take over the functions which should be
performed by other faculties. I am saying that it is the rationality of
determinism that makes it dangerous, usurping not only the intuition of the
higher mind, but practical common sense.
This is an
old saying (practically a major thesis) in Zen philosophy: "The mind is the
slayer of the reaI." There are other "enemies" that man has to
conquer, such as his physical appetites, but the lusts of the flesh are less
important today than the lusts of the mind, seducing leaders and the public
alike with brain trusts, expertise, computers, the information explosion, and
other forms of reliance on rational process.
The
pertinence of this recital of what may be self-evident is that in the discovery
of the true nature of light we have a reference, a guide which can help us set
cosmology to rights with first things first. And now I am going to have to say
something that may seem heretical to scientists and theologians alike.
This is that
quantum physics, when understood, can provide the compass that in former times
required revealed religion: it can tell us of first cause.
Let me go
back to St. Basil. Here we have a Greek philosopher who makes far more profound
and correct statements than did the philosophers who lived at the height of
Greek civilization (4th and 5th centuries B.C.). Compare St. Basil with
Aristotle. Impressive as was Aristotle's encyclopedic mind, he said nothing that
would anticipate the revolutionary discoveries of modern science that were to
reverse reason. Aristotle did not say that time does not exist in the world of
light, nor could reason reach such a strange idea. How did St. Basil reach it? By
reasoning about revealed scripture. This brings out the function of
revealed religion: it supplies what reason per se cannot. We could
not reason that light was the first thing to come into existence. Reason begins
at the other end, with objects, and proceeds to divide the object much as did
Democritus with his atoms. Reason has to start with something; it cannot admit
first cause. Try it on yourself; you will always find yourself asking what was
the cause of the first cause.
Genesis
tells us that first cause is fiat: Let there be light! What is "fiat"?
It is action (decision). So when Planck discovers that light is a
quantum of action, he is discovering "fiat," the same fiat described
in Genesis, the light that was created on the first day. But, you say, God is
the cause behind the first cause. (3) The question of whether God
(action) is different from light (action) is a mystery that I cannot resolve. I
suspect misplaced concreteness.
I'm
not implying that revealed religion is necessarily correct. As St. Gregory, a
contemporary of St. Basil and an equally pious philosopher, said (as paraphrased
by Sheldon Williams):
The
Language of Scripture does not reveal the truth directly but a half concealed
version of it. This is because the sensible world from which it draws its
illustration is an imperfect copy of the intelligible. (4)
One would
think St. Gregory had been reading Eddington, who says:
The
physicist draws up an elaborate plan of the atom and then proceeds critically to
erase each detail in turn. What is left is the atom of modern physics. (5)
In
other words, we can trust neither reason nor revealed religion alone; we need
both. This does not mean that all reasoned interpretations of scripture are
correct, quite the contrary. But when we can find so close an equivalence as
exists between the prerational accounts of light as the beginning of things on
the one hand and modem physics on the other, then I think it is at last possible
to begin to correctly interpret the symbolic statements of revealed religion.
Here
we must be careful not to go astray, as has so often been done, and it is to
guard against this possibility that I invoke quantum physics. Not all physics,
which is often as much a slave to rationalism as is philosophy. Recall the
physicist who insisted that the atom "could not be divided because the word
atom means indivisible." Or recall the vicissitudes of the theory of light,
which went from corpuscles, to waves in an ether, to quanta of action. Such a
history implies that something was forcing the concept of light to grow in a way
that rationalism could not have provided. This factor is, of course,
experimental evidence, but it had to manifest through particular facts, such as
the discrepancy in how radiation varies with temperature, which forced
Planck to invent a new theory.
Perhaps
the reader will think, "Well, physics is already the revealed religion of
the present time-you are just creating a new sect." But it is quite to the
contrary: I'm attempting to show that the hard-won truths of physics, those that
have forced the most radical departures, are equivalent to what the best earlier
thinkers discovered in revealed religion.
Thus,
rather than creating another sect, I'm asking for an examination in depth, which
I affirm can effect not only a confirmation of what was formerly faith, but a
synthesis of science, which today is becoming so severely fragmented that it is
losing all meaning and would stand to benefit as much as would religion.
So
much, then, for the overall picture. We have dealt in the last two chapters with
the many-faceted problem of light, all aspects of which point one way: to the
ultimate centrality or primacy of light as the origin of everything. And by
everything I mean not only matter, which light creates by its condensation from
photons and which it changes by the interaction of photons with atoms and
molecules, but also what St. Basil called the intelligible world, the
eternal now of consciousness.
Perhaps
it will be discovered that tachyons, those supposed entities which travel faster
than light, may comprise the intelligible world. As to that, I will not attempt
to say. I will be content if I can carry the reader to the border of this
kingdom in which, paradoxically, he already resides.
Preview
of later chapters
In
the chapters that follow we will trace evolution through the kingdoms of nature.
We will find that as the entities of nature develop into higher and higher
orders of organization-from particles to atoms, from atoms to molecules, thence
to cells, organisms, and animals-they are invariably associated with an
intrinsic activity. This intrinsic activity is the positive factor behind
evolution and for two important reasons cannot be dismissed. One is theoretical,
that a universe of inert particles (billiard balls) could not in itself
construct the highly ordered and extremely complex entities which we call living
creatures; and the other is that quantum physics has discovered in the quantum
of action just such an innate activity.
The
quantum of action, as it occurs, for example, in visible light, involves an
extremely small amount of energy as compared with the energy we exert to walk
about or drive an automobile, but this comparison is misleading. Just as the
energy required to steer an automobile is minute compared with the
energy required to propel it, so too the energy required in deciding
to move our own body is minute compared with the energy of actually moving.
Our body is, in fact, an elaborate mechanism in which muscles are controlled by
nerves, and nerves by minute electrical changes such as are involved in changing
the bond in a molecule. Changing the bond in a molecule is just what the quantum
of action can effect, but the difference between the creation of a
starch molecule from carbon dioxide and water (which is accomplished in
chlorophyll by a quantum of light) and human decision is so great that we need
to trace with care how nature has evolved from the chlorophyll molecule to
creatures, of the complexity of animals and man.
In
this evolution the quantum of action will be found to have a central role. While
it is itself invisible and unknowable (one of its other names is the quantum of
uncertainty), it persists through the whole chain of being and
"causes" the progressive movement of evolution, much as by current
theory of evolution, accident is said to cause mutation and hence evolution.
Since the quantum of uncertainty manifests in particles and atoms in random
fashion, it may be thought of as accident, but this designation becomes
inappropriate in later stages when higher organisms develop and invest the
intrinsic randomness with a highly competent organization; for in this case, the
intrinsic randomness seems more like "play" than accident, much as, in
childhood, play results in mere accident, but in later life play can refer to
the activity of a skilled athlete or a gifted virtuoso.
There
is in all creation this transcendence of what is strictly rational or implied by
its antecedents, and the word "play" comes a little closer than the
word "accident" to describing the cause of new creations, whether they
be those of the mathematician, the poet, the painter, or even the progress of
evolution itself. The point is, we must free ourselves from the compulsion to
view everything as having an antecedent or cause, or, in the name of science, to
invert means and ends. It would not occur to us to say the creativity of
Beethoven was due to his learning to play the piano; in fact, we would recognize
that learning the mechanics of music was part of the means that Beethoven
employed to transmit his creations. In a like manner, we should put first things
first in interpreting nature, and think of the organisms as the means which the
divine play uses to express its exuberance, rather than to presume that all of
life can be explained as caused by laws.
Laws
describe constraints; they do not create. We must posit a universe which does
both, and in what follows we will endeavor to trace the interplay of these two
primary forces - the creative play and the laws of necessity.
Since
most science deals only in the latter, leaving evolution to be explained as
accident, we can say that we are setting up a new paradigm or model for the
universe, a paradigm which deals expressly with the interplay of freedom and
constraint. But we cannot do this without careful attention to what science has
found. This testimony is all the more valuable because, contrary to the former
belief of science in the omnipotence of law, quantum physics has discovered that
uncertainty or play is the most fundamental entity of all and is more basic than
the fundamental particles it can create.
So
we will follow the quantum of uncertainty as it falls into matter. Chapters IV
and V establish the broad outlines of the fall and subsequent ascent.
Chapters
VI to IX fill in the details as confirmed in the evolution of atoms (VI),
molecules (VII), plants (VIII), and animals (IX). Chapter X ventures into
territory implied by the theory but not recognized by science, and Chapter XI
examines animal instinct in the light of the principles implied in Chapter X.
Chapters
XII to XV carry our thesis to its conclusion: the evolution of man and beyond.
1.
Hexameron V2, 5:40c-41a, 7:45a. Quoted in Williams, I. P.
Sheldon. The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy.
Edited by A. H. Armstrong. London: Cambridge University Press, 1967.
2.
Whitmont, Edward C. The Symbolic Quest. New York: G. P. Putnam's
Sons, 1969.
3.
We could also say that there is no reason for light not to have an antecedent.
For light to be first cause means only that its antecedents do not imply the
result. See discussion of the turn at the opening of Chapter V.
4.
Ibid.
5.
Eddington, Arthur S. New Pathways in Science (p. 259). London:
Cambridge University Press, 1947; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959.
The
Reflexive Universe
Mindfire