Mr. Heisenberg, meet Mr. Aquinas
I was thinking. . . but I'd rather start with quote:
But what authority has decided that nature as such must forever remain the nature of modern physics, and that history must forever appear only as subject matter for historians? We cannot, of course, reject today's technological world as devil's work, nor may we destroy it - assuming it does not destroy itself. (Heidegger - Identity and Difference)
That, as a preface, provides us with a good point for embarking on a little mental journey. As we all know, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is the basis for quantum mechanics in the sense that it is the ground. It basically say that the position and speed of a particle are mutually unknowable. It also provides for the "virtual paths" I rambled about in the Feynman Diagram diatribe in an earlier post. Even in the transcribed lecture of Paul Davies that T.A.C. so diligently mailed to me (how they found my address I will still never know) had the author asserting that quantum uncertainty destroys the causal argument for the existence of God - since things come into and out of being spontaneously. I digress (again). I really do have a point. So, the principle of uncertainty has been extended to say that there is uncertainty in the things, but it began by saying that the uncertainty comes about because of a problem of observation. The simple looking at the sub-atomic thing changes the thing by looking. Davies, in God and the New Physics, goes so far as to say that if there were a cat in a box with a deadly chemical that will be released by a chemical reaction having fifty-fifty odds, that there is in fact a "virtual live cat" and a "virtual dead cat" in the box at the same time until an observer opens the box, and thus vanishes the virtual leaving only the real live or dead cat. He even has nifty hand drawings of dead/live cat to illustrate his point (I'm not kidding). Forgive the second digression as well. Glean one think from the rant - uncertainty is because of the observer.
Flash to Thomas, De Ente et Essentia, to be precise. In his observations on the being and essence of intellectual substances he shows that for God, to be and to be God are on and the same thing. Additionally, he shows that in angelic substances the essence is not the same as the act of existing, and so that even without matter, there still exists potentiality in angels, etc. Then he comes to lowly man. Again, for an intellectual substance there is some overlap between essence and act of existing, which is to say, in some limited sense, that to be a man and to be are somewhat the same. Without going into greater detail (for few people will bother to have read this far anyway, even if I assure the reader that I will eventually have a point), it is enough to say that if existence is somehow necessary to be a man, then there is a sense in which being and intellectual being affects the world around us in a way different that a simple unthinking causal reaction (like a falling rock). Permitting a course analogy, it is as if the world were a sheet of paper with iron filings on it. But every intellectual substance is like a magnet, of greater or lesser power depending on the kind of substance it is, and its mere presence affects the world around it. hmm.......
Could we then say that Heisenberg's principle has its causal root in Thomas' definition of man as intellectual substance? Is it possible that the basis of quantum physics is rooted in the "empty" and "unenlightened" dark age philosophy of a Schoolman? A rather appalling thought for a amateur mathematician and physicist (theoretical only) such as myself. I really don't know if I will be able to sleep tonight. But, to end with a quote from the same essay as the first quote:
Only when we turn thoughtfully toward what has been thought, will we be turned to use for what must still be thought.
