Can we derive the properties of complex entities from the particles or lesser entities from which they are built or from which they grow? The modern man tends to answer, “Yes,” even when he’s an accomplished thinker in a field which involves higher level analysis of empirical or abstract knowledge. This idea, underlying various sorts of reductionism, is an assumption, an unwarranted assumption so far as current knowledge of created being goes, though it is denied by a good number of scientists in fields such as neuroscience and cosmology and mathematics. Clearly, there are many thinkers in the humanities as well as various sorts of creative writers and artists who also deny reductionism is a valid way to approach being in general. I’m lumping theology and philosophy in with humanities for this discussion. Reductionism can be a very effective way to approach being constrained to one level of being. In the essay, Human Moral Nature: An Overview, I provide an overview of created being lying on a spectrum of different levels ranging from very abstract to concrete, thing-like being.
Let me quickly discuss a couple of anti-reductionistic findings from physics, the first being a recent result.
The BaBar Collaboration conducts experiments at the BaBar detector at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and analyzes the results. Some of those physicists have recently found direct evidence of asymmetric time-reversal in decays of the B-meson. In the overview article, Viewpoint: Particle Decays Point to an Arrow of Time, we can read:
Time moves irrevocably in one direction. Things get old, decay, and fall apart, but they rarely ever reassemble and grow young. But at the particle level, time’s arrow is not so clearly defined. Most collisions and other particle interactions look the same whether run forwards or backwards. Physicists have, however, identified a few reactions that appear to change when time is reversed, but the reasoning has assumed certain relations between fundamental symmetries of particle physics. The BaBar collaboration has now observed time-reversal violation directly and unambiguously in decays of B mesons. The measured asymmetry, reported in Physical Review Letters [footnote elided] is statistically significant and consistent with indirect observations.
Why is it that we could have at least some asymmetric time-reversal at the particle level but no evidence of any such time-reversal at the macroscopic level? Indeed, we have no evidence of complex thing-like being, as such, engaging in any processes of time-reversal, though symmetric time-reversal is allowed by the mathematics. Why is it that things age but don’t grow young, Humpty-Dumpty becomes a puddle of goo surrounded by egg-shell fragments without the process ever going in reverse? After all, in a local sense, many of the most important, and certainly most readily quantifiable, of the physical events of our universe are well-described by the equations and reasoning procedures of Newtonian physics under most conditions and special relativity under the remaining conditions. Newtonian physics and special relativity are both symmetric in time, indifferent—so to speak—between movement `forward’ or `backward’ in time.
We have to, and should, move forward optimistically, assuming that what we know to such extraordinary precision, such as particle interactions described as QED, is true, truly true, but we have to also realize that there are holes, complexities, and unknown regions beyond the frontier. Moreover, Newtonian and special relativity physics describe stuff subject to global interactions not so clearly subject to the laws, or more general rules, of the constituent stuff. Even QED describes the stuff of, say, semi-conductors but doesn’t tell us anything about the larger-scale events which occur when that stuff functions as the stuff of computers. When we generalize from our yet incomplete knowledge, we are making assumptions. When we do it well, we travel, we can hope with some sureness of foot, in that field of metaphysics considered at best a questionable human field of thought by advocates of some viewpoints such as `scientific materialism’. It’s disturbing when those advocates, including some very competent and insightful scientists, deny metaphysics by engaging unconsciously in a sloppy form of metaphysics.
Many scientists and philosophers speak and write as if the relentless movement of macroscopic entities and processes forward in time is a necessary consequence of the second law of thermodynamics. Probably not a law, though it’s likely a `contingent law’, that is, a law given the way in which our universe is expanding as well as the initial conditions at the start of that expansion. Roger Penrose has presented pretty solid arguments that the second law of thermodynamics is actually a result of the accidental (in a philosophical sense) configuration of the stuff of this universe at the time it began to expand, the time of the so-called Big Bang. Yet, it does seem to be true that, at the macroscopic level, “Time moves irrevocably in one direction.” This is a level where the direction of time as we know it is established, though there might be a second establishment in the domain of the universe.
Let me address what might be happening in that domain with an analogy which I don’t think will work in the end, but it might guide us in the direction of finding better ways of thinking and speaking and writing about that arrow of time which we seem to be riding. I think the way in which the so-called Big Bang is presented has implicitly prejudiced the thinking of even serious scientists and philosophers. Rather than thinking of that Big Bang in terms of the spacetime which resulted from the ensuing expansion, think in terms of the abstract spaces which correspond to states of being. The universe is a strange sort of projectile which has been shot in a very particular direction into the spacetime which resulted as that strange projectile began to expand into that space of states of being, the space of configurations. In terms of concrete being, we could speak weirdly but usefully of that projectile being shot into nothingness in terms of concrete being, into a space of abstractions which can’t be directly perceived or explored. The path of that projectile, indeed the complex narrative occurring as the projectile hurtles away from its initial state of being, can’t be derived from the properties of the projectile and the various particles and other entities of which it is composed. The universe is projectile, itself passing through various states of being—where `itself’ is defined by what can truly be studied by particle-based reductionistic ways of thought, and also the path which adds great complexity, and certain well-defined characteristics, to the totality.
I discussed the strong hints that conservation of energy isn’t a law for the universe as a whole in A Universe is More than it Contains based upon comments by P.J.E. Peebles in Principles of Physical Cosmology:
We see that the faster decrease of [the radiation density of a relativistic universe modeled as a gas] compared to the mass density of a nonrelativistic gas is the result of the pressure work done by the expanding radiation. However, since the volume of the universe varies as [the third power of the expansion factor of the universe], the net radiation energy in a closed [and expanding] universe decreases as [the inverse of the expansion factor of the universe] as the universe expands. Where does the lost energy go? Since there is no pressure gradient in the homogeneously distributed radiation, the pressure does not act to accelerate the expansion of the universe. (The active gravitational mass due to the pressure has the opposite effect, slowing the rate of expansion…) The resolution of this apparent paradox is that while energy conservation is a good local concept…and can be defined more generally in the special case of an isolated system in asymptotically flat space, there is not a general global energy conservation law in general relativity theory. [Principles of Physical Cosmology, P.J.E. Peebles, Princeton University Press, 1993, page 139.]
We live in a world where a building can be reduced to brick and timbers and copper wires and PVC pipes but the properties of those particles don’t sum up to the properties of a building. In the simplest possible terms, many of the properties of the building come from the directed activities of carpentry and plumbing and pavement construction as well as the use of the building. Other properties come from the context of the hidden or visible utility systems and roadways and the various surrounding social and economic and political systems. I don’t mean to return to any sort of design theology, only to point out there are a variety of realms and levels of created being not directly observable in the particle interactions as electromagnetic radiation separated from matter in the early millenia of the universe’s expansion nor in those of the sun’s nuclear reactions and the resulting electromagnetic events. Some of those realms and levels of created being can only be known and explored by way of the abstractions of mathematics and by way of other abstract concepts corresponding to aspects and parts of our universe.
Is it unreasonable to assert that a human being can have some degree of true freedom even if he’s made of substances and biochemical processes which are fully deterministic? It’s interesting that physics itself doesn’t support any reductionistic view of our universe or the entities which are part of it. There are more intuitive arguments and perhaps some fairly tight empirical-level arguments at the level of human nature which provide plausible space for the freedom of a creature of flesh and blood, some of those arguments being provided by neuroscientists or other scientists.
I’ll be soon publishing an essay which argues that we have every reason to believe we have some small but significant freedom and it’s a serious error to argue that the freedom we detect in our human lives must be illusory because our bodies are made of stuff which seems to be subject to a strong variety of determinism. Parts of that second line of counter-arguments were presented in this essay.