The Newtonian Universe and Free Will

Inspired by the entropy theme in Maggots

Part of the theme of the "Maggots" album is the Second law of Thermodynamics - the names of the two scientists in Maggots were taken by Rod Swenson from two eminent physicists in that field! (I am putting the details in the Maggots commentary). The link with the album theme? It's all to do with entropy, i.e. the increasing levels of chaos and disorder as the universe physically ages and heads toward a state in which all energy is totally distributed and everything is "dead". )

That got me thinking. About people who believe that the future is predetermined, and about evolution. These two issues are linked - evolution is obviously impossible in a predetermined universe. and a universe that contains evolution obviously cannot be predetermined. It all links directly to free will; for if the universe is predetermined, free will is an illusion and we have no freedom of choice in what we do or even in what we think.

So to what extent is the universe predetermined? Many people would say "It isn't", although many would claim the opposite, describing its predetermination as "fate". As someone with both Arts (languages and music) and Sciences (Mathematics and Chemistry) interests, it occurred to me that, just maybe, both were correct. How could this be? I think the answer lies in the boundary between Newtonian and Quantum mechanics. Don't worry, it's not going to get all technical!

At the macro level, the universe obeys Newtonian laws. The movement of the clusters of galaxies, the galaxies themselves, the stars within the galaxies, and the planets and general debris circling the stars, all obey simple laws that were given mathematical form by Newton. If we can accurately measure the position, mass and movement of these bodies we can predict their movements with absolute precision. So, if we were to forget human events (including the Plasmatics!!!) we would see that the universe is, indeed, predetermined.

We live our lives in a fairly predetermined way. The most accurate prediction of tomorrow is yesterday, and much of what we do is done on a sort of "auto pilot", doing the same as we did last time without actually thinking about it very much. Of course, it has to be like that for civilisation to work; if tomorrow were totally different to yesterday and today, the result would be - here comes the word, folks! - chaos.

Now, if we look at what is actually going on in our brains, it is theoretically possible to build a direct replica of a human brain, complete with all its memories. Now, I grant you, it would be extremely hard to do this, but ifs not impossible in theory. So let's conduct what Einstein calls a "thought experiment". Here in the Anna Sthetic Research Institute in London we have a human brain ("H") and a direct replica (R"). R has been created using computer technology, but its functionalityy is exactly the same as that of H.

Now, let's do a Scientific Experiment! We will now stimulate both brains with an identical stimulus and measure the responses and compare them.

Now, bearing in mind that both brains are identical in all functional respects, we might expect both responses to be exactly the same. Let us assume, for a moment, that the experiment has shown that this is so. We don't have a problem with that, do we? Well, lets do a second experiment in which the replica brain R is stimulated with a more complex input. OK, since we are all Plasmatics fans here, let's assume that we are inputting a Plasmatics video into R. We record all the thoughts etc. generated in R by that stimulus. This allows us to predict exactly how the human brain H will respond.

What does this mean? Well, it surely means that the behaviour of H is totally predictable. And if something is totally predictable, it means that there can be no free will, because there is only one single possible outcome. You begin to see the problem ...

The only solution, I think, is to find some way to explain why the brain can never be copied with total accuracy. The only way to do this, without introducing mystical concepts of souls and spirits, is to refer to quantum mechanics. This claims, and all experiments seem to confirm it, that at the sub atomic level etc motion is partly random and consequently unpredictable. So we would need to argue that, at the level of the individual brain cells, random changes are taking place. Therefore, H and R can never behave the same because of unavoidable differences at their lowest levels.

My guess is that such quantum effects do take, place within the brain, but that they are not the dominant effect. Most of what the brain does could be predicted using Newtonian mechanics, if we had sufficient skill to fully understand the composition of the brain. But not all of it. On this line of reasoning, free will would only exist "on the fringe" so to speak.

Which, in a curious way, takes us back to the Plasmatics. If the Rolling Stones represent Newtonian mechanics (all very predictable etc), the Plasmatics perhaps represent Quantum mechanics ( the ambiguity of the Plasmatics' image, the hidden meaning of the lyrics, the uncertainty about what will actually happen if you take a chainsaw to an electric guitar etc,) And we can see that most record buyers want the Newtonian model of things - the predictability of Keith's guitar riffs, the familiarity of the same old numbers, cranked out once again for the millionth time. And, indeed, most people do want a predictable "Newtonian-style" life. There's nothing wrong in that, of course. But maybe it ought to make us value, just a bit more than we usually do, those people within society who say "Hey, I've just made this great new sound, you wanna hear it?"

So back to the title of this piece. My guess is that there is only one thing that will change the course of the universe, and that is human free will. Without human consciousness, the universe would be on a Newtonian path, totally predictable, heading nowhere. With human consciousness, we can move from the Earth to the other stars, and throughout the entire universe, developing as we go. Not fighting ludicrous battles with aliens (note to sci-fi buffs - the likelihood of other life forms being remotely the same size as us is exceptionally small!) but fulfilling some destiny which is, as yet, unknown to us.

Hmmm ... is Anna Sthetic in danger of claiming that we are on a cosmic mission commanded by God? Not necessarily; but here's an idea for you to think about. God, instead of all-powerful being, could be some force that can only manifest itself through human consciousness and free-will. Traditional theology, to use management concepts, puts God as a 'top-down" creator. But could it be that God is instead a "bottom-up" creator, who has planted some form of seed at the very roots of existence, and it's all connected with quantum mechanics?

By the way, Einstein could never accept quantum mechanics and famously remarked "God does not play dice". It's interesting that in 'Legends Never Die', Wendy sings about "throwing the dice in the halls of time and playing the game".

served