I must admit that Mr. Feynman has been my favorite physicist for more than 40 years, and I remember watching that program many years ago.He and his best friend spent years wheeling and dealing and scheming to get permission to visit the obscure country of Tannu Tuva that was swallowed up by the Soviet Union. He offered to teach in the Soviet universities, tried to sponsor a Tuvan art show and even wrote a ballet for bongos with the hope of doing a Soviet tour. Great documentary.
dailymotion.com/video/x24ggol_richard-feynman-the-last-journey-of-a-genius_shortfilms
Working on a rather limited set of examples (one), the answer to that is an obvious ‘yes’.Natural processes can be random. Is it natural for the universe to come into existence, to assemble itself into some kind of order, to evolve life to eventually have intelligent species? Is that something that just naturally happens on its own?
I’ve read about his ‘Bongo Ballet’ or at least some musical with which he was involved. I’ll watch the doc tonight. Thanks.He and his best friend spent years wheeling and dealing and scheming to get permission to visit the obscure country of Tannu Tuva that was swallowed up by the Soviet Union. He offered to teach in the Soviet universities, tried to sponsor a Tuvan art show and even wrote a ballet for bongos with the hope of doing a Soviet tour. Great documentary.
dailymotion.com/video/x24ggol_richard-feynman-the-last-journey-of-a-genius_shortfilms
The gospel - the empirical argument that no one has to be a slave to their past, proven by real-world evidence of lives turned around, “was lost but now am found, was blind, but now I see”.I apologize if someone has already asked this question but, in your opinion, what is the most convincing argument for God’s existence? Why is it so convincing to you personally? Why is it so convincing overall?
I apologize for my lack of knowledge in the field of quantum mechanics, but I’m curious. How exactly does quantum mechanics disprove Aquinas?That was the original intent, but Aquinas couldn’t have foreseen particle physics and quantum mechanics.
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According to your logic then I guess we could say that when they pick out those little balls out of the machine to determine the winning lotto 649 numbers it is not random because the machine works according to following natural rules that predetermine and limit the outcome. The balls bounce around according to nature and the number that is picked was picked by natural processes. There was no intent behind it, but as you say the balls bounced around according to natural rules then it must not be random. Btw, where do these rules come from?Working on a rather limited set of examples (one), the answer to that is an obvious ‘yes’.
And by natural processes (versus randomness) I mean that everything follows rules. A snowflake crystal doesn’t have a random number of sides. There are not a random number of hydrogen atoms in water. Biological evolution is not random.
In quantum mechanics change can occur with no discernible cause. Perhaps the best example of this is radioactive decay, in which the nucleus of an unstable atom will decay by emitting energy in the form of a particle. But this decay is indeterminate, meaning that there’s no way of determining when the decay will occur, or why it occurs. There’s no way of relating a cause to the effect. All that you can be certain of is that it will decay. Perhaps now, perhaps a thousand years from now. At some point in time it will just up and decay. Or to put in terms that Aquinas might be more familiar with, it will change from a state of potentiality, to a state of actuality, with no apparent cause. Which means that Aquinas’ First Way is wrong. Because contrary to his argument, some things can change without the need of something else to cause that change.I apologize for my lack of knowledge in the field of quantum mechanics, but I’m curious. How exactly does quantum mechanics disprove Aquinas?
Not quite correct. The “natural rules” include quantum indeterminancy, meaning that the final outcome can’t be determined by the initial conditions.There was no intent behind it, but as you say the balls bounced around according to natural rules then it must not be random.
This gets the metaphysics wrong and invents a conclusion that physical science can never make.In quantum mechanics change can occur with no discernible cause. Perhaps the best example of this is radioactive decay, in which the nucleus of an unstable atom will decay by emitting energy in the form of a particle. But this decay is indeterminate, meaning that there’s no way of determining when the decay will occur, or why it occurs. There’s no way of relating a cause to the effect. All that you can be certain of is that it will decay. Perhaps now, perhaps a thousand years from now. At some point in time it will just up and decay. Or to put in terms that Aquinas might be more familiar with, it will change from a state of potentiality, to a state of actuality, with no apparent cause. Which means that Aquinas’ First Way is wrong. Because contrary to his argument, some things can change without the need of something else to cause that change.
This happens because in quantum mechanics there’s something known as quantum indeterminancy. The innate incompleteness in the state of a physical system. It’s not that we simply don’t know the state of the system, it’s that the system can’t be said to have a fixed state. Something else that Aquinas probably wouldn’t have been too keen on. How can something not have a fixed state? It’s either in this state or it isn’t, it can’t be both. But quantum mechanics says that it can. It can be in two states at the same time.
Actually, now that I think about it, Aquinas might’ve been able to relate to quantum indeterminancy, equating indeterminancy to potentiality. It would be interesting to know what Aquinas would think if he were alive today. He would no doubt wonder how that radioactive nucleus can go from a state of potentiality, to a state of actuality, with no apparent cause.
Aquinas was a brilliant guy. Perhaps what we need today, is another Thomas Aquinas.
(As an addendum: Aquinas and Einstein seem to have been of the same mindset. Aquinas believed that every effect must have a cause. And Einstein believed that every action must be local. Two very similar arguments. Quantum mechanics says that two of the most brilliant minds in history, were both wrong. Reality it seems, is no respecter of human reasoning.)
Sorry, I’m rambling again. Which is good for you, because sometimes I say stupid things when I ramble.
Aquinas is in no threat from quantum mechanics. Physics can not give us the whole picture of reality anymore than an airplane engineer can give us the whole picture of what it means to be human by quantifying the average weight of people who fly on planes. Since physics limits itself to quantifying things in terms of numbers. You can’t know everything about person by just knowing his weight. Physics is only quantitative and ignores everything else including the qualitative. In addition the numbers do not interpret themselves. One has to use philosophy to interpret them, some kind of reasoning process. Thus to say that quantum mechanics disproves the first way is to make a philosophical statement. Not a statement of physics, which itself hardly proves such a thing. For instance, not knowing what the cause is does not mean there is no cause at all. You would be making a huge philosophical leap to conclude that because you can not determine a cause therefore there is none. And then an even bigger leap to say that this then disproves Aquinas. Aquinas arguments are metaphysical philosophical arguments. If the premises are true then the conclusion necessarily follows. Thus, we could be more certain about Aquinas’ arguments then your philosophical interpretation of physics.In quantum mechanics change can occur with no discernible cause. Perhaps the best example of this is radioactive decay, in which the nucleus of an unstable atom will decay by emitting energy in the form of a particle. But this decay is indeterminate, meaning that there’s no way of determining when the decay will occur, or why it occurs. There’s no way of relating a cause to the effect. All that you can be certain of is that it will decay. Perhaps now, perhaps a thousand years from now. At some point in time it will just up and decay. Or to put in terms that Aquinas might be more familiar with, it will change from a state of potentiality, to a state of actuality, with no apparent cause. Which means that Aquinas’ First Way is wrong. Because contrary to his argument, some things can change without the need of something else to cause that change.
This happens because in quantum mechanics there’s something known as quantum indeterminancy. The innate incompleteness in the state of a physical system. It’s not that we simply don’t know the state of the system, it’s that the system can’t be said to have a fixed state. Something else that Aquinas probably wouldn’t have been too keen on. How can something not have a fixed state? It’s either in this state or it isn’t, it can’t be both. But quantum mechanics says that it can. It can be in two states at the same time.
Actually, now that I think about it, Aquinas might’ve been able to relate to quantum indeterminancy, equating indeterminancy to potentiality. It would be interesting to know what Aquinas would think if he were alive today. He would no doubt wonder how that radioactive nucleus can go from a state of potentiality, to a state of actuality, with no apparent cause.
Aquinas was a brilliant guy. Perhaps what we need today, is another Thomas Aquinas.
(As an addendum: Aquinas and Einstein seem to have been of the same mindset. Aquinas believed that every effect must have a cause. And Einstein believed that every action must be local. Two very similar arguments. Quantum mechanics says that two of the most brilliant minds in history, were both wrong. Reality it seems, is no respecter of human reasoning.)
Sorry, I’m rambling again. Which is good for you, because sometimes I say stupid things when I ramble.
If physics in general raises philosophical questions it cannot answer, the same is if anything even more clearly true of quantum mechanics in particular. Feynman’s famous remark that nobody understands quantum mechanics is an overstatement, but it is certainly by no means obvious how to interpret some of the theory’s stranger aspects. Quantum mechanics has been claimed to “show” all sorts of things – that the law of excluded middle is false, that scientific realism is false, that idealism is true, etc. By itself it shows none of these things. In each case, certain philosophical assumptions are first read into quantum mechanics and then read out again. But the same thing is true of claims to the effect that quantum mechanics undermines causality. By itself it does not, and could not, show such a thing either. Here as in the other cases, it is the metaphysical background assumptions we bring to bear on quantum mechanics that determine how we interpret it. This is as true of philosophical naturalists, atheists, et al. as it is of Scholastics.
In this argument you’re absolutely correct, quantum mechanics and specifically our understanding of quantum mechanics, is almost certainly wrong. But again, this is irrelevant when it comes to supporting Aquinas’ First Way.This gets the metaphysics wrong and invents a conclusion that physical science can never make.
Which is exactly my point, the premise isn’t true. At the risk of making everyone sick by repeating this over and over again. In his argument Aquinas sets a threshold for his premise, that it’s “certain” and “evident”. There are however “observable” phenomena that display an ability to change without an apparent cause. This means that Aquinas’ premise isn’t “certain” and “evident”, and therefore his threshold isn’t met, and his premise is false. If his premise is false, than his conclusion is invalid.Aquinas arguments are metaphysical philosophical arguments. If the premises are true then the conclusion necessarily follows.
Well I could start a thread on whether or not the moon is made of cheese, and I could really think it might be, but that doesn’t make it uncertain that it’s not.In this argument you’re absolutely correct, quantum mechanics and specifically our understanding of quantum mechanics, is almost certainly wrong. But again, this is irrelevant when it comes to supporting Aquinas’ First Way.
It’s irrelevant because Aquinas’ conclusion in the First Way is based on the premise that it’s “certain” and “evident” that change must have a cause. So it’s not necessary for me to prove that change can occur without a cause, it’s only necessary for me to show that this correlation isn’t “certain” and “evident”. This correlation was obviously certain and evident to Aquinas, but because of quantum mechanics, it’s not certain and evident to us. You can argue that it’s still true, but you can’t argue that it’s certain and evident, or we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
So long as I can point to something for which the change doesn’t appear to have a cause, Aquinas’ threshold of “certain” and “evident” is unmet, and his argument is therefore invalid.
This is a poor analogy, because you can’t produce any evidence that the moon is made of cheese, but I can produce direct evidence of things appearing to change without a cause. And because of the aforementioned threshold that Aquinas laid out in his argument, this renders his premise false, and his conclusion invalid.Well I could start a thread on whether or not the moon is made of cheese, and I could really think it might be, but that doesn’t make it uncertain that it’s not.
That some things appear to change without a cause is all that can be proved.. . . I can produce direct evidence of things appearing to change without a cause. . .
Change is a reduction of potency to act. So the real question is “what is actualising that potency, what is bringing potency into act?”. This is what the metaphysics of Aquinas is dealing with. It is irrelevant that a thing moves in a particular way without a mechanistic cause. Aquinas is not arguing that mechanistic motion needs a first cause because in the first place he is not dealing with that kind of motion. If he was, then quantum physics would certainly present a problem and also a legitimate argument against the first 2 of the 5 ways.Which is exactly my point, the premise isn’t true. At the risk of making everyone sick by repeating this over and over again. In his argument Aquinas sets a threshold for his premise, that it’s “certain” and “evident”. There are however “observable” phenomena that display an ability to change without an apparent cause. This means that Aquinas’ premise isn’t “certain” and “evident”, and therefore his threshold isn’t met, and his premise is false. If his premise is false, than his conclusion is invalid.
TrueThat some things appear to change without a cause is all that can be proved.
Possibly, or it could be telling us something about the fundamental nature of reality. It would be speculative at this point to decide either way.This merely implies that there is a deficit in our knowledge base.
What it provides is support for the possibility of change without a cause. Not the certainty, but the possibility.It is mystifying quantum physics to claim that it provides an example of change without a cause.
Bingo!!! Which means that Aquinas’ premise, that all change requires a cause, isn’t “certain” and “evident”. It may be that some changes don’t require a cause. We don’t know. Now this would be baseless speculation if it wasn’t for the fact that we have evidence of just such seemingly causeless changes. I will admit that this doesn’t rise to the level of proof, but it does rise to the level of uncertainty. Which negates Aquinas’ claim that all changes are “certain” and “evident” to have a cause.The best we can do is admit we do not understand the why’s and how’s of what some things do.
Other than that it looks like cheese?This is a poor analogy, because you can’t produce any evidence that the moon is made of cheese, but I can produce direct evidence of things appearing to change without a cause. And because of the aforementioned threshold that Aquinas laid out in his argument, this renders his premise false, and his conclusion invalid.
You equate the certainty of principles with people believing and/or seeing those principles apply in such and such a case. That’s the problem.Bingo!!! Which means that Aquinas’ premise, that all change requires a cause, isn’t “certain” and “evident”. It may be that some changes don’t require a cause. We don’t know. Now this would be baseless speculation if it wasn’t for the fact that we have evidence of just such seemingly causeless changes. I will admit that this doesn’t rise to the level of proof, but it does rise to the level of uncertainty. Which negates Aquinas’ claim that all changes are “certain” and “evident” to have a cause.
It’s the uncertainty that negates Aquinas’ premise, and invalidates his conclusion.