It seems that, as soon as our ancestors could afford to, they added a spiritual dimension to their existence. Human burial practices are at least 100,000 years old, and religious ceremonies date back at least 50,000 years. Though interpretations vary, it is thought that the famous archeological site called Gobekli Tepe is the oldest ritual site ever discovered. This Turkish site is thought to have been constructed around 10,000 BC—not by city-dwellers, or even by settled agriculturalists—but by nomadic hunter-gatherers. This implies that such people satisfied their spiritual needs before settling down and building the great early civilizations of Mesopotamia. The Biblical Matthew, with his famous line “Upon this Rock, I will build my Church,” may have got things backwards.
Cave paintings that reveal a reverence for animals and the Greek constellations named after divinities suggest that our forebears lacked the explicit distinctions between the sky above our heads, the fauna that roam the Earth and ourselves that we take for granted today—it has taken centuries of scientific investigation to make the fundamental differences between these realms obvious. The terrestrial, celestial and human were intertwined in the magical stories our prescientific ancestors told themselves.
In humanity’s earliest theories of the world, then, people played a fundamental role.
But, with the dawn of the scientific revolution in the sixteenth century, such anthropocentrism grew less plausible—first, in 1543, Copernicus overthrew the geocentric model of our Solar System, and then, in 1687, Isaac Newton published his Principia Mathematica. Newton offered a bold new worldview, in which the motions of objects from pebbles to planets could be both explained and predicted—tell me the current position and velocity of an object, along with the forces acting on it, and I’ll give you its position and velocity at any later point in time. Copernicus—and later Galileo— demonstrated that the Earth was not at the center of the Solar System. Newton robbed our ancestors of their innocence by proposing the first universal theory, which explained phenomena across all of time and space in purely physical terms—magical and religious thinking were banished from his predictable, clockwork universe. Humans, it seemed, played no special role in this new understanding of reality.
But it was not obvious how Newton’s theory of classical mechanics applied to living things. After all, predicting the trajectory of a cannonball was far easier than predicting the flight pattern of a bird. Moreover, none of this new physics had anything to say about the intricate design of living creatures. So people could still take refuge in the fact that humans were created in God’s image—there was still no explanation of our apparent design, let alone our ability to comprehend the cosmos.
But then along came Darwin and our ancestors took another step towards adulthood. In Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, all the apparent design in the biosphere has emerged through a long, long chain of slight modifications passed down from generation to generation. Those changes, which we now understand as due to mutations in the genetic code, were more likely to be passed on if they increased an organism’s fecundity—its ability to produce offspring—who, in turn, survived and reproduced. (The modern incarnation of Darwinian theory considers genes, not organisms, as the fundamental replicators.) The organism’s environment was a selector, a ruthless arbiter that determined which organisms were more likely to reproduce, and which were more likely to be tossed into the dustbin of extinction. String together enough of these cycles of random changes and non-random selection, and the result is all the elegant design and order in the biosphere.
There was no getting around it—this process explained the evolution of humans, too. Apparently, the story behind the emergence of algae and cattle also explained our entry onto the world stage. There was no room for the exceptional status of our species, which many had hoped biology would preserve.
So, after only a few centuries of modern science, the role of people was diminished on all fronts. We are not at the physical center of our Solar System, nor of our galaxy. We are not mentioned in any of our profoundest physical theories, which present a world that conforms to exact laws of motion and can be predicted with certainty. And even our best theory of life implies that we came about by the same naturalistic process that brought about every other apeish creature. Anthropocentrism, it seemed, was a thing of the past, a relic of a less mature people.
But then came a new theory of reality, one that cannot be readily dismissed. A few years ago, physicist David Deutsch published a foundational paper on what he calls constructor theory. Since Newton, our best theories in physics have followed the paradigm he established—given the state of a system, a theory ought to predict its state at any future time. The details of what a state is depend on the particular theory involved, but in general this has been the prevailing conception—in Deutsch’s own phrase—since Newton’s first great universal theory.
Constructor theory’s fundamental principle is that the laws of physics can be viewed in terms of transformations, which are either possible or impossible. So, if Newton’s theory tells you the trajectory of a projectile, given some initial position and velocity, constructor theory asks which trajectories are possible in principle, according to Newton’s theory.
The switch from thinking about a system’s particular transformation from one state to another to asking what transformations are possible in principle represents a radical shift in perspective. This new, deeper worldview goads us into asking questions that wouldn’t have been conceivable under the previous, Newtonian framework. If we may describe the world in terms of possible transformations, rather than particular trajectories, then which objects may cause such transformations, and which can’t, and why?
People have converted rocks into cathedrals. They’ve mixed the fiery energy of the sun with the guts of Earth itself to produce the orderly, purposeful devices that prevail in our digital age. They’ve turned wolves into dogs, trees into books and metal into vehicles that fly through space.
None of these transformations happen spontaneously in the universe. They require the presence of people—entities capable of facilitating any transformation permitted by the laws of nature, so long as they know how to achieve it. In describing how reality works, then, one must take people into account.
It’s taken a few centuries, but we’ve come back to the ancients’ view of the relationship between people and the cosmos. While we’ve rightly abandoned the majority of their beliefs, they were right about this much—to understand nature at its deepest, we have to acknowledge the special role people play. When predicting the motions of the planets, or explaining the origins and evolution of life, people are irrelevant. But it is people, and only people, who are the ultimate transformers of this vast and wondrous cosmos. May our descendants use this power to create an ever more beautiful reality.
29 comments
I’ve noticed a pattern in nature too—well, in modern human nature at least. Materialist cosmogonies are invariably followed by flaky progressivist mysticism. The pattern fits your piece. With fearless hearts and unflinchingly rational minds, you and Deutsch banish God: Away with childish superstition! And then you turn around and replace him with a collective Mr. Maker and his Doodle Drawers forging smart phones and Pokemon watches from the “guts of the Earth.” That’s some hard-headed realism there.
Your account isn’t even self-consistent, by the way. Referring to human inventions you write: “None of these transformations happen spontaneously in the universe.” Not according to your hypothesis. If humans are products of the universe, human products are also products of the universe. The specialness you claim for them is not a physical property or process but a subjective attribution. Remove the word “spontaneously” in your claim and the contradiction becomes obvious.
Second, and like your many predecessors, you rely on a collective “we” that cannot exist in a materialist account. “We,” “people,” and other such collective, intergenerational entities are parasitic on the Christian notion of universal humanity. But humanity can’t exist in a materialist cosmology. Homo sapiens exist, yes, but the term refers to nothing more than a bunch of closely related organisms that happen to have evolved and will disappear (by cosmic standards) in the near future. The notion that there’s a we marching through history on some great collective Mr. Maker-like journey is nothing more than a fantasy.
An entirely unconvincing argument. People do not play a “special role” in nature. They play a special role only in people’s lives. Turning wolves into dogs is not special in nature. It is not an exception to Newton’s or Einstein’s laws. It is special only to us, because we see a difference and have a preference. This argument is no more than a reversion to the anthropocentric view of the universe.
“We are not mentioned in any of our profoundest physical theories”
Maybe we are. The observer effect in QM seems to prove that consciousness is a thing, a fundamental component of the universe. God would appear to be mentioned for the same reason: who was observing the universe before we came along?
Observer effect in Quantum Mechanics? I am far from an expert, but last I checked, events at the quantum level are way too small to be consciously observed by humans. We ‘observe’, or rather measure quantum events using unconscious machines, which can create interference and thus cause the collapse of the wave function. Is there something I am missing?
And maybe I am going too far with my musings, but if there is a conscious God that observes everything, then how is ‘The observer effect in QM’ possible? As in, how can an observer effect be found (i.e. compared to non-observer condition), if there is always an observer?
“if there is always an observer?”
Good point. If God is always about in the quad, then the observer effect must always be satisfied, no?
Let me restate. Either God does not consciously observe quantum effects, or your view of the observer effect is false. If quantum events are always consciously observed by God, then the wave function always collapses. But we wouldn’t be having this discussion if it always collapses. So would you agree then that God is not consciously observing quantum events?
“If quantum events are always consciously observed by God, then the wave function always collapses.”
Yes, I believe that’s what you said the first time, and I find it compelling. Are you trying to find a disagreement when there is none? Ad hoc, if I were trying to dig up a refutation, at the moment the best I could do would be to suggest that your point should be obvious to anyone studying the question, so, since the question seems to remain unresolved, perhaps there is a refutation of your point, tho I have no idea what it might be. From my amateur perspective, the observer effect is so close to black magic that … well, I’m not an expert, but it sure is strange. I’m not partisan on the issue.
Again, I think it didn’t come across right. Last try:
1) A quantum-scale object behaves like a wave function, unless it is consciously (per you) observed, in which case it behaves like a particle.
2) God consciously observes everything.
3) Experiments show that quantum-scale objects can behave like a wave function, depending on how/when they are measured (i.e. double-slit experiment).
4) 2 and 3 contradict each other. If God consciously observes everything, which leads to wave function collapse, then how did scientists observe quantum-scale objects behaving like wave functions? For if God observes quantum-scale objects, then they should always behave like particles, which they don’t.
Since the experimental results are reliable, your understanding of QM requires that God does not consciously observe quantum events. Either that, or you reject the empirical results, in which point your understanding of the observer effect is itself false. That’s my entire point.
“in which point your understanding of the observer effect is itself false. That’s my entire point.”
Yes. I believe your point stands (for the time being) and that thus my initial idea of God-The-Observer fails (for the time being). Thanks very much, it’s a nice, understandable refutation/objection to ‘God in the quad’, I wonder how Knox would respond if he were here.
“There was a young man who said “God
Must find it exceedingly odd
To think that the tree
Should continue to be
When there’s no one about in the quad.”
Reply:
“Dear Sir: Your astonishment’s odd;
I am always about in the quad.
And that’s why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.”
Me, I’m just an interested observer, and I seem to have collapsed an idea 😉
Yay, I now feel understood;)
But just to make sure I understand you, I would like to know which of the 3 arguments you reject:
1) A quantum-scale object behaves like a wave function, unless it is consciously observed, in which case it behaves like a particle.
2) God consciously observes everything.
3) Experiments reliably show that quantum-scale objects can behave like a wave function, depending on how/when they are measured (i.e. double-slit experiment).
Never mind. I read the answer below.
It was me who was misunderstood — I had immediately acceded to your point. Anyway, I’d just say that your logic is impeccable: if a human consciousness is required to ‘observe’ a quantum event then that would indicate that the all-observing God-consciousness has *not* observed it which would have saved some human the trouble, but God supposedly observes everything so we have a paradox — or we abandon the conscious observer. If God-The-Observer is to be salvaged, you’d have to get into special pleading like, God chooses not to observe some things, so that we can have the fun of doing so … which isn’t very satisfying. Or maybe there is some respectable counter argument, but I don’t know what it could be.
Just to make more mischief tho, I would say that the ‘Knox Interpretation’ if you’ll let me call it that, would almost prove the existence of God (nothing without an observer, ergo God had to exist to observe the Big Bang), thus one is not astonished that among atheist/materialist/evolutionist types, the Knox Interpretation would be unwelcome.
Anyway there are two kinds of people: those who can believe that the universe popped into existence from nothing, nowhere, never, and for no reason whatsoever and just happened to make us possible by random lottery of physics … and those who can’t believe it and I can’t. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that I can’t.
Do not argue with such ignoramuses! It is akin to casting pearl unto the swine!
You catch my by surprise there Ted, I find Benny entirely civil. The misunderstanding was genuine.
think of a schroedinger’s cat situation. the observer who opens the box collapses the wave function, but for the non-observer outside, the room is now described by a wave function. once the non-observer outside the room is informed, then the wave function describes those further out who do not know the fate of the cat. And further and further until it is only God the Observer who collapses the wave function and brings reality out of potentiality.
But let’s be fanciful and say that the original observer places a phone call to God and “informs” Him of the result. Does that collapse the wave function for all those stages in the middle who do not know, or does the wave function still exist for them? And if that wave function still stands on a local level, then God’s consciousness only brings the universe into reality but does not erase human consciousness as an element affecting reality on a quantum level per the double slit experiment.
“then God’s consciousness only brings the universe into reality”
It’s all too much for me. If folks assure me that at least some of this stuff is mathematically rigorously demonstrated then I’ll take their word for it, but it has always seemed to me that Schroedinger’s box would start to smell bad eventually even if I didn’t open it. It all seems like nonsense. I’m with Big Al that physics should make sense, and, ok, Big Al lost, but he has had the last laugh more than once and I do hope that someone comes up with something better. I’m also told that time is relative, *but* that if I peek at this electron here, then it’s buddy on the other side of the universe instantly assumes the opposite spin. But what does ‘instantly’ mean if there’s no absolute time? I should stick with Newton.
Yes, the “observer” in QM has nothing to do with a conscious observer, it can just be piece of paper you put on one slit in the double slit experiment. Of course you need a conscious human observer to obtain the empirical result that the interference pattern goes away, but that’s just a trivial necessity for there to be human knowledge.
The “God of the Gaps” was never an elegant hypothesis for anything, it adds no explanatory value and its proponents need to withdraw every time science solves some of the gaps, or outright misrepresent the scientific state of knowledge. Rational apologetics is dead, but of course this won’t stop theists from being theists.
“The “God of the Gaps” was never an elegant hypothesis for anything”
GOG was never more than an attempt to ridicule. I has no content other than mockery. Without irony it is interesting that the people most likely to appeal to ‘gaps’ are the evolutionists, who routinely say that the fossil record is full of gaps and that the scaffold has disappeared and thus can never be found, etc. When Miller/Urey *demonstrate* that random chemistry does not produce anything but the simplest organic molecules they ‘gap’ again by appealing to ‘beeelions and beeelions of years’ — Sagan said it so well. Only evolutionists are permitted this special pleading. In every other branch of science we demonstrate our claims, and if we can’t, they are dismissed.
“We ‘observe’, or rather measure quantum events using unconscious machines”
I’m no expert either, but it does seem that unless we notice the measurement that the unconscious machines have made, the wave does not collapse. This troubles me. If the cleaning lady takes a look at the experiment and notices the result does that count even tho she has no idea what she’s looking at? How about if a dog looks at it? Anyway this ‘Copenhagen Interpretation’ appears to be taken so seriously that the alternative is the ‘Many Worlds’ interpretation where no observer is needed because everything that could happen does happen anyway. But if you want to believe that there is a brand new universe created at each possible decision point for each possible particle in the universe … well, that’s a lot of universes from nothing, no? Personally I rather believe that God is always about in the quad.
“unless we notice the measurement that the unconscious machines have made, the wave does not collapse”. No quantum physicist claims such a thing, since the claim cannot be tested.
The Copenhagen interpretation, per wikipedia, has nothing to do with consciousness: “According to the Copenhagen interpretation, physical systems generally do not have definite properties prior to being measured, and quantum mechanics can only predict the probability distribution of a given measurement’s possible results. The act of measurement affects the system, causing the set of probabilities to reduce to only one of the possible values immediately after the measurement. This feature is known as wave function collapse… Although the Copenhagen interpretation is often confused with the idea that consciousness causes collapse, it defines an “observer” merely as that which collapses the wave function.”
Furthermore, there are much more than 2 interpretations of QM. Among the most popular are De Broglie–Bohm, and Objective collapse (i.e https://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.4646v2.pdf).
“Personally I rather believe that God is always about in the quad.” So either God does not consciously observe quantum effects, or your view of the observer effect is false. If quantum events are always consciously observed by God, then the wave function always collapses. But we wouldn’t be having this discussion if it always collapses.
“has nothing to do with consciousness:”
I’ve read otherwise.
https://www.thoughtco.com/is-consciousness-related-to-quantum-physics-2698801
“One of the first ways that consciousness and quantum physics come together is through the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. In this theory, the quantum wave function collapses due to a conscious observer making a measurement of a physical system. This is the interpretation of quantum physics that sparked the Schroedinger’s cat thought experiment, demonstrating some level of the absurdity of this way of thinking, except that it does completely match the evidence of what scientists observe at the quantum level.”
… that’s just the very first result of a google search, I don’t ‘recommend’ it, but there are a million similar.
But I’m no expert and I’ll not be more than an asker of questions. I do know there’s several Interpretations. It’s all very interesting tho.
This is not the Copenhagen interpretation, but the (untested) Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation. I’ll let Werner Heisenberg, in Physics and Philosophy, (http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Heisenberg,Werner/Heisenberg,%20Werner%20-%20Physics%20and%20philosophy.pdf), respond:
“the transition from the `possible’ to the `actual’ takes place during the act of observation. If we want to describe what happens in an atomic event, we have to realize that the word `happens’ can apply only to the observation, not to the state of affairs between two observations. It applies to the physical, not the psychical act of observation, and we may say that the transition from the `possible’ to the `actual’ takes place as soon as the interaction of the object with the measuring device, and thereby with the rest of the world, has come into play; it is not connected with the act of registration of the result by the mind of the observer.”
Looking at a smaller and older poll from 2011 (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.1069.pdf), only 2 out of 33 physicists agree that “The observer plays a distinguished physical role (e.g., wave-function collapse by consciousness)”. To which the authors add “Given the relatively strong (42%) support for the Copenhagen interpretation, this finding shows that support of the Copenhagen interpretation does not necessarily imply a belief in a fundamental role for consciousness. (Popular accounts have sometimes suggested that the Copenhagen interpretation attributes such a role to consciousness. In our view, this is to misunderstand the Copenhagen interpretation.)”.
Again, more recent polls estimate support of the Copenhagen interpretation to be at around +-4% (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.4646v2.pdf).
* and in the newer poll, only 1 out of 76 agreed that “The observer plays a distinguished physical role (e.g., wave-function collapse by consciousness)”
“(Popular accounts have sometimes suggested that the Copenhagen interpretation attributes such a role to consciousness. In our view, this is to misunderstand the Copenhagen interpretation.)”.
That’s exactly on the point. Thanks, perhaps I’ve just been swept along in a common misunderstanding. Again, I’m not partisan. I probe ideas tho and will continue to poke at these things out of curiosity. As I said, I’ve always considered the observer effect (as I seem to have misunderstood it) to be a really strange idea, I’ll be happy to let it go.
“The Biblical Matthew, with his famous line “Upon this Rock, I will build my Church,” may have got things backwards.”
This doesn’t make sense, doesn’t fit with anything else in the essay. This is something I’d expect from a 9th grade student who grabbed a few phrases from various documents and tried to glue them together for a term paper. It’s BS.
I was hoping for something more scholarly, like maybe at least a first-year university student.
Thank you for taking the time to read my article.
Another fabulous essay! I peed a little.