the impact that is suggested to me is that, if the behavior of the universe is random /unpredictable, then predestination/determinism is wrong. On the other hand, randomness doesn’t equal free will either, exactly.

Sometimes people say there is no free will because God is all-knowing – one way out of this is to say God exists outside of time and that, though he knows what we think of as the future, he doesn’t cause it. Quantim mechanics says (I think?) that time is illusory, and Sartre believed that people were able to go “back in time” in their thoughts when they reflected on their acts, thus escaping determinism … so, maybe free will does exist, isn’t random (because it’sself-determined).

And God is planless, just making stuff up, making us up, as he goes along? Is that providence?

….ouch, my head hurts and I don’t think I made any sense.

There aren’t many ‘mainstream’ theologians who make cosmology central to their work but the field of science and religion studies is thriving. There’s a good summary of the field at counterbalance.org. The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) in Berkeley has been working with the Vatican Observatory on the subject of divine action in particular and has a chapter by chapter summary of their publications.

Frankly, it makes my brain ache in a very satisfactory way! What do you think the impact is?

This is interesting … would the uncertainty priciple impact stuff like providence, predestination, free will?

The Uncertainty Principle is a little different to the paradox of Schrödinger’s poor cat but both are to do with measurement. In the Schrödinger formulation of quantum mechanics the state of a physical system is fully described by its wave function which evolves deterministically with time. The trouble is that the wave function doesn’t relate straightforwardly to the kind of measurements we can make. In fact, the square of the wave function gives the probability that a particular measurement will turn out a particular way.

The Cat Paradox just sets up a macroscopic system with a wave function that yields a 50/50 chance of the cat being alive or dead. We might say that it has to be one or the other but the strangeness of the quantum world says otherwise.

The Uncertainty Principle focuses on another aspect of quantum measurement. Imagine you have a particle happily moving along. The motion of the particle is governed by its wave function and the wave function gives you the probability of certain measurements coming out certain ways. You can perform experiments to find out where the particle is and how fast it is moving–all the information is there in the wave function–but it turns out you can only pin down the particle so much and beyond a certain tolerance in your measuring the more accurately you fix its position the rougher the answer you get for its velocity. It’s often presented as one measurement disturbing the system a little and disrupting the other but the principle is, I think, deeper than that.

How much deeper is still an open question.

Anyway, it sounds like Bronowski, in The Ascent of Man, was doing the same thing you now do … he took obscure theory and made it something that could touch anyone’s heart.

There’s one show in the series that did that so well. The subject was the birth of quantum theory but Bronowski set the whole thing against the backdrop of Nazism and talked about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle being a principle of tolerance. He finishes the programme in Auschwitz quoting Oliver Cromwell: ‘I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think you may be mistaken’.

It’s such a pity that the series isn’t available on video or DVD.The series is available from the BBC, Amazon, and all sorts of other places–the last time I looked I drew a blank but apparently it was reissued in April this year. Now to butter up my community and convince them it’s an essential buy.

Happy Thanksgiving to you too! When I was in the US I grew to love Thankgsiving. And not just for the pies.

Rob

Or is that just a clever way of pointing out that you screwed up?

Hope you are well. Happy American Thanksgiving!

Mark