Strange Legacy

Socrates Meets Quantum Physics

“True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.” These were the words of the Greek philosopher Socrates, who lived from approximately 469 to 399 BC. Many are familiar with Socrates for his impact on the philosophies of Western civilization, and for demonstrating the toxic effects of Hemlock.

Socrates advocated a sense of humility born from an understanding of one’s own ignorance; such humility would compel an individual to seek knowledge and wisdom, and thus become a virtuous member of society. For Socrates, the pursuit of knowledge was an unending quest; though omnipotence may be possible for the gods, humans would never achieve a level of absolute understanding.

Jump ahead a millennium or so to the time of Sir Isaac Newton. Newton unified the Earth with the Heavens by mathematically demonstrating that the same force which causes apples to fall – namely gravity – is the same force which binds the planets to the sun. Newton and others like him had a profound impact on the philosophy of science. Given the ability of Newton’s equations to predict the movement of objects (such as planets) over vast periods of time, many began to speculate about penetrating the veil of human uncertainty – the possibility of one day predicting the future.

Sound ludicrous? Not really – if the universe operates as Newton, and later Einstein speculated then everything obeys laws which are constant and observable. Thus, if you could somehow comprehend the position and movement of every particle in the universe at a given instant – the initial state of the universe in that moment – you could predict every event through the end of time. This deterministic theory suggests that the fate of all things was instantly determined in the moment of creation.

Unfortunately for Newton and Einstein, the Devil is in the details – the tiny details. While the predictable laws of motion and gravity apply very well to objects of scale, they do a pretty lousy job of explaining how things work at the subatomic level. Along came physicists such as Bohr, Heisenberg, Robertson and Schrödinger to rain on the determinist’s parade. Their work on the principles of quantum physics threw a wrench in the idea that the universe behaved according to absolute, predictable laws. They demonstrated that, at the subatomic level, there is an inherent level of randomness – one can predict what will probably happen, but it is impossible to know anything with certainty. Despite the contribution of his own ideas to the emerging field of quantum physics, Einstein hated the idea of a probabilistic universe so much that he rebuked it by saying, “God does not play dice!”

It’s difficult to comprehend the enormous impact of this “uncertainty principle” on human philosophy. Quantum physics did more than simply disrupt the hope of that we might one day use science to predict future events with absolute precision – it demonstrated the existence of real, seemingly impenetrable barriers in our quest for absolute knowledge. Our current scientific method depends on our ability to conduct the same experiment over-and-over and achieve the same result each time. Yet, on very small scales this is not possible.

Even on a larger scale we face similar obstacles. We know that the earth moves around the sun at approximately 30 kilometers-per-second; that the sun zips around the center of the galaxy at about 220 to 250 kilometers-per-second; and that our galaxy is also moving at hundreds of kilometers-per-second relative to its neighbors. Nevertheless, because we cannot measure our speed against anything that is completely motionless, it is impossible for us to develop an absolute standard of motion. This failing again sabotages our attempts to fully comprehend the workings of the cosmos.

It would seem that we live in a modest universe – one which is unwilling to lay bare all of her secrets. Perhaps there is an element of design in these obstacles to our understanding, limiting our progression and preventing us from tinkering with the DNA of creation itself. In the presence of these apparently impenetrable barriers it seems clear that we can never be certain of what we think is certain. Regardless of how much we learn or discover it appears that we, like Socrates, are forever compelled acknowledge our ignorance.

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