The Versatility of Nature Part II                                

The revolution in contemporary physics ushered in the atomic and nuclear age. At the beginning of this century, however, it was resisted on many fronts, for it was in startling contrast to the prevailing Newtonian world view which only recently had been confirmed through its fusion with evolutionary thought. Now the mechanical essence of reality, including culture, possessed a history which only further supported the belief in the unlimited progress of mankind.

 

The newer discoveries of physics made this consolidation untidy by detecting important aspects of nature that apparently could not fit the mechanical ideas and terms that work so well in a world that had become increasingly technological. Could the universe, after all, not be a machine? On the other hand, considering the technological achievements made over the last three hundred years, achievements that are now essential to our cultural patterns, how could continuing prospects for an ever-better future not be based upon the order and rationality embodied in our mechanical understanding (already proven by the inventions and commercial enterprises that make up our world) of life and its possibilities?

 

THE DECLINE OF MECHANISM:

 

According to historians, Newtonian physics was not seriously challenged until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Then "the great change was brought about," as Einstein (1879-1955) recounts, "by Faraday, Maxwell and Hertz - as a matter of fact half unconsciously and against their will."[1] Their startling research into electricity, magnetism and light could not be interpolated into the older, mechanical model of the universe, and the difficulty of fitting these discoveries into the inherited classical picture kept many scientists from fully appreciating their implications. Dampier remarks that the followers of classical science (the Newtonian world view) "assumed that they themselves were dealing with realities, and that the main lines of possible scientific inquiry had been laid down once for all."[2]

 

With more crucial experimentation being reported, the subterranean world of energy showed definite indications that it was less solid that classical physicists had supposed. Maxwell's (1831-1879) electromagnetic theory, coupled with the discoveries of radioactivity processes at the atomic levels, upset the customary idea of indivisibility of the atom as well as its mathematical determinism: scientists soon discovered that radioactivity does not have an absolute mathematical predictability but obey only statistical laws.

 

The early premonition of a new, nonmechanical and nondeterministic concept of nature, sensed by few scientists and resisted by more, reopened the closed conceptual world of mechanics. Using the machine as the ultimate model for interrupting nature had been so fruitful that it was quite upsetting to find that this approach was increasingly unintelligible, and even contradictory, at the microphysical level of nature. As early as 1892, K. Pearson (1857-1936) wrote, "step by step men of science are coming to recognize that mechanism is not at the bottom of phenomena but is only the conceptual shorthand by aid of which they can briefly describe and resume phenomena."[3]

 

H. Hertz (1857-1894) continued in the direction started by Maxwell and gradually took a similar stance: scientific propositions, instead of giving the inherent essence of natural phenomena, are only as valid as the limited aspects of nature they attempt to describe.

 

Thus, thanks to Maxwell's research, the mechanical understanding of matter was being challenged by the newer concepts of fields of force. With Einstein's relativity theory, space and time lost their independence and absoluteness, for, according to Einstein, "What was true for electrical action could not be denied for gravitation. Everywhere Newton's actions-at-a-distance gave way to fields spreading with finite velocity."[4]

 

The discovery, however, that became what Einstein has called, the "basis of all twentieth century research in physics"[5]was Max Planck's (1857-1947) quantum theory, according to which material energy is released in discontinuous packets, or quanta, and not in a continuous stream as heretofore assumed. Then Niels Bohr's (1885-1962) theory of the atom in 1913 postulated that the internal organization of matter was due to the presence of quanta.[6] Although his theory was later improved upon, scientific thinking about nature was moving past the determinate world of classical mechanics into the unknown region of indeterminacy.

 

Another event confronted head-on the mechanistic judgement that the inner determinism of nature, in principle, permitted complete predictability. In 1927, Heisenburg showed that the kind of knowledge required for exact prediction (the simultaneous apprehension of position and velocity) was not available in the realm of microphysics.[7] In fact, the very instrumentation employed at the microphysical level affected the object of measurement. The scientific inhabitants of the rigid world of mechanistic certainly were progressing, in their investigations of the atomic realm, into a strange world where, as Sullivan put it, the investigators cannot "observe the course of nature without disturbing it."[8]

 

The concept of the universe as an independent reality utterly separated from man (and therefore objectively observable in its inevitable progress) had been the post-medieval inspiration for science. The early pioneers, men like Descartes, Galileo, and Bacon had bequeathed to their successors the axiomatic belief that there was a division between man and nature whereby man could put on scientific spectacles, as it were, and become the detached, impersonal investigator of the truth of the universe. This assumption was being undermined at the atomic level. As Oppenheim has said, instead of being only a mechanically-minded spectator measuring the external world, man, through his intervention in order to obtain information, "creates, despite all the universal order of this world, a new, unique, not fully predictable, situation."[9]Surprisingly, man is a participant-observer in the processes of reality, rather than a mere observer.

 

At the same time scientists were deciding another issue regarding the ultimate constitution of matter or, as it was now also being called, energy. To explain certain phenomena, a particle theory made sense, while a different range of phenomena could best be served by a wave theory. (However strange it may seem, energy seems to manifest both the characteristics of discrete, moving particles and the fluidity of waterlike wave action.) Bohr applied the principle of complementarity to explain the phenomenon. Two different theories were used; both were valid, and together they gave a compete explanation. Each could accommodate a range of data, but both could not be applied to the same set of phenomena, and neither theory alone could explain enough. The two theories needed each other as alternative explanations, with a certain "tolerance of ambiguity."[10]

 

With the gradual realization that the absolute objectivity of their predecessors was a dream, some scientists began to revise their thinking about the restricted character of their concepts and methods of investigation. The recurring evidence supporting the dual, or particle-wave, relationship of matter and Heisenburg's principle of indeterminacy could hardly be avoided. Nature was more versatile in its operations than the mechanists had assumed when they reduced its operations to a series of complicated pushes and pulls. Whereas in the past, even living organisms were subjected to interpretation solely on the basis of efficient and material causes, this mechanization was now seen as an unwarranted theoretical extrapolation from the former successes of classical physics. In other words, the Newtonian paradigm of science had been universalized and applied to all fields of knowledge. As applied to technology, this assumption worked very well; in explaining organic life, on the other hand, it came to be seen that mechanical concepts could not serve adequately.

 

The realms of biology and psychology, in spite of the protestations of Huxley and Freud, manifest different levels of phenomena that does the realm of inert matter. In recognizing the necessity for making this important distinction, scientists like Bohr pointed out that "there is set a fundamental limit to the analysis of the phenomena of life in terms of physical concepts, since the interference necessitated by an observation which would be as complete as possible from the point of view of the atomic theory would cause the death of the organism. In other words, the strict application of those concepts which are adapted to our description of inanimate nature might stand in a relationship of exclusion to the consideration of the laws of the phenomena of life."[11]

 

SCIENTIFIC RATIONALITY AS A PLURALIST ENTERPRISE:

 

In revising the inherited classical world view, twentieth century physical sciences, spearheaded by developments in contemporary physics, underscored the inherent limitations of the older mechanistic viewpoint both within the realm of natural phenomena and as a basis for philosophy of life itself. (This latter influence will be taken up in the concluding portion of Part III of this article.) But to elevate the new physics as an exclusive description of all existence was no more adequate than the older mechanistic attempt. In each instance science would commit what Whitehead calls the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness," by which a certain mode of description is assumed to be the only possible one.[12] While there has been cumulative growth in scientific knowledge involving taxonomic generalization, discovery and revision leading to a more refined understanding of the universe, contemporary physics has also taught the scientist an epistemological lesson: neither classical and recent science can give us a comprehensive explanation of reality and do justice to all the dimensions of human experience.

 

Heisenberg has pointed out that nineteenth century physics had elaborated upon Newtonian mechanics by sustaining the ideal of reducing "everything in the whole universe completely and perfectly to purely quantitative changes in a few basic entities which themselves never change qualitatively."[13] But greater experimental accuracy brought evidence of new forms of natural energy whose explanations were not amendable to the inherited concepts of mechanistic reductionism. The classical theories arising from Newton's and Boyle's corpuscular world had to give way in the face of Einstein's continuum of field forces and Bohr's quantum realm of atomic and subatomic phenomena. The mechanistic assumption of clockwork determinism becomes less feasible in the realm of multiple energy discharges. The absolute perspective of Newtonian mechanics could no longer properly interpret the entire range of natural phenomena.

 

The abandonment of certain classical statements regarding nature is not a justification for scientific skepticism or for taking the position that knowledge cannot be arrived at with reasonable certainty. In speaking about the advances in physics, A.R. Hall points out that these "later discoveries have always embraced the earlier: Newton was not proved wrong by Einstein, nor Lavoisier by Rutherford. The formulation of scientific proposition may be modified, and limitations to its application recognized, without affecting its propriety in the context to which it was originally found appropriate."[14]

 

Nature is richer, more versatile in its structures and processes than any one empirical framework can disclose. A single, mechanistic approach cannot adequately span the interpretive spectrum of energy exchanges. The Newtonian concept of nature possesses validity, but only within the limited context of its origin and applicability. It simply cannot encompass all the phenomena that take place within the universe This requires pluralistic concepts and viewpoints that incorporate various domains: the regions of biological interest, for example, cannot be reduced to the concepts of physics and chemistry without excluding definite areas of experience, that are integral to the approach of biology. By understanding and accepting this, the integrity of discovery is preserved without jeopardizing the reality under study.

 

Scientific progress thus shows a certain finality in its results. According to Heisenburg, "In the exact sciences the word 'final' obviously means that there are always self-contained, mathematically representable, systems of concepts and laws applicable to certain realms of experience, in which realms they are always valid for the entire cosmos and cannot be changed or improved. Obviously, however, we cannot expect these concepts and laws to be suitable for the subsequent description of new realms of experience."[15]

 

The gross, everyday world of matter and motion, as depicted in machines, could be effectively understood by means of sensibly grounded mechanical explanations. But when direct observation was not possible in the realm of atomic activities, and when the evidence obtained from these subtler regions of matter demanded an intelligible interpretation, the everyday, common-sense concepts of customary physics and mechanics did not hold. Nature's mysteries at this level of investigation could not be solved by the older notions of matter and motion. Nature's intelligibility was immeasurably deeper and more diversified than the almost literal, deterministic nineteenth century view had envisioned or wanted to admit. Nature's consistent operations at the atomic, or microphysical level, at which its dual characteristics resembled particles and waves, made it necessary for quantum mechanics to become the fundamental interpretation. Equally important, when investigating the realm of larger energies and enormous distances such as those between the galaxies surrounding earth, the region of astrophysics, the relativity theory became the fundamental system for interpretation.

 

Thus, interpreting nature requires a discriminating consciousness that considers nature's multileveled manifestations of energy and allows for many viewpoints and concepts that are appropriate to different levels of investigation. The scientist, in other words, descends from the continuum of the astrophysical realm and ascends from the indeterminateness of the microphysical realm, approaching asymptotically the ordinary, everyday realm of our convenient Newtonian world.

 

The older, highly successful mechanical explanation of natural processes overreached its limitations and became, for three hundred years, the ultimate explanation of natural phenomena. But the continuing collaboration between consciousness and nature finally broke new ground that could not be harvest with the traditional tools. If science remains faithful to its charter for truth, then its future is assured by the admission of pluralistic and coordinating interpretations of nature. As Bohr remarks, the idea of complementarity could be extended to other sciences in which a number of explanations, rather than just one, can better explain unexpected but persistent phenomena. He mentions, for example, that "in biological research, references to features of wholeness and purposeful reactions of organisms are used together with the increasingly detailed information on structure and regulatory processes ... It must be realized that the attitudes termed mechanistic and finalistic are not contradictory points of view but rather exhibit a complementary relationship which is connected with our positions as observers of nature."[16]

 

The double revolution of evolutionary theory and high energy physics had enormous implications upon Western culture. In Part III of this article we shall examine its impact upon man's self-understanding.

 

[1]A. Einstein, Out of My Later Years (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), p. 101. 

[2] Dampier, A History of Science and its Relations with Philosophy and Religion (New York: Mac Millan, 1943), p. xix.

[3]K. Pearson, The Grammar of Science (New York: Meridian Books, 1957), p. xiv. 

[4] Einstein, p. 102.

[5] Ibid., p. 229-30.

[6] L. DeBroglie, The Revolution in Physics (New York: Noonday Press, 1953), p. 126.

[7] W. Heisenburg, The Physicist's Conception of Nature (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958) p. 42.

[8] J. Sullivan, The Limitations of Science (New York: Mentor Books, 1949), p. 20.

[9] J.R. Oppenheimer, Science and the Common Understanding (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), p. 62

[10]Matson, The Broken Image (New York: Doubleday, 1964), p. 133; DeBroglie, p. 218-19. 

[11] N. Bohr, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), p. 22ff.

[12] A.N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Free Press, 1969), Chap. 3.

[13] D. Bohm, Causality and Chance in Modern Physics (Princeton: VanNostrand, 1957), p.47.

[14] A.R. Hall, The Scientific Revolution, 1500-1800 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1956), p. xiii.

[15] W. Heisenburg, p. 26-7.

[16] N. Bohr, Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1958), p. 92.

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