The War on Design: Darwin and Einstein

Continuing our series of posts on Dr Wolfgang Smith's 2019 monumental monograph: Physics & Vertical Causation, the End of Quantum Reality. (Angelico Press, 2019, also available on Amazon Kindle)

For further reading on this and related material, see the Philos-Sophia Initiative website.

We ended the last post with a provocative but irresistible call to arms from Dr Smith: to ''jettison our Galilean, Cartesian, and Newtonian assumptions and become philosophically literate once again.'' An important key to the success of his campaign is the notion of vertical causality, which he proceeds to define and clarify.

The act of being confers upon creatures:

• existence; and
• a power to act by way of vertical causality (VC). 

This power of substantial forms to act may be referred to as substantial VC. There is a higher mode of VC which can give rise to substantial forms and which may be referred to as creative VC, which implies design. Examples of design include:

• speciation  (in the terrestrial domain) and
• immobility (pertaining to the cosmos at large).

Darwin. 1874

Smith now makes two claims which will shock those whose education has assured them that Darwinian evolution and Einsteinian physics are settled science:

1. The Darwinist claim, so far from constituting a scientific hypothesis supported by empirical evidence, proves to be in truth an ideological tenet, based upon the a priori denial of design in the form of speciation.[1]
2. Even as Darwinism rests upon the denial of design in the origin of species, relativistic physics at large is based upon the a priori rejection of design in the form of immobility. Einsteinian physics proves thus to be a kind of Darwinism on a cosmic scale; and turns out in the end—to the surprise and consternation of many—to be likewise untenable.

Elliott & Fry [Public domain]. Robert Ashby Collection.

[1] The discovery of DNA in the 20th century disqualified Darwinism as a scientific theory. Dembski's theorem on complex specified information rigorously disproved Darwinism on mathematical grounds.

The remainder of this fairly long chapter elaborates on Smith's second claim (see point 2. above). At times, the arguments become somewhat technical and a full reading of Smith's text is recommended for those readers interested in the details. We shall be giving a flavour of the implications of Smith's reasoning in the next posts.




Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in 1921 (age 42). Ferdinand Schmutzer [Public domain]

The Verticality of Intellect

We continue our series of posts reviewing Dr Wolfgang Smith's 2019 monumental monograph: Physics & Vertical Causation, the End of Quantum Reality. (Angelico Press, 2019, also available on Amazon Kindle)

For further reading on this and related material, see the Philos-Sophia Initiative website.

The last section of Chapter 4 moves from visual perception to the intellect, the so-called ''eye of the soul'' by which we see. Recalling that Descartes proposed a world consisting of res extensae and res cogitantes, Smith notes how disciples of this Cartesian bifurcation viewed the world as a single gigantic mechanism. It was for them a natural progression to assume that man too is also a mechanism, whose intellectual capacities must result from cerebral machinery.

He then presents a history of the development of this assumption.

c. 1900 : Ramón y Cajal identifies the neuron. (1852-1934, Nobel Prize in 1906)

Alan Turing aged 16 [Public Domain]

1936 : Alan Turing (1912-1954) conceives the ''Turing machine'', capable of executing every conceivable algorithm by means of a ''program'' in the ''software'' part of the machine.


Scientists assume that the human brain functions like a computer and that human intelligence is consequently algorithmic.




Smith then produces his surprise witness.

1933 : Kurt Gödel disproved the above assumption ''with mathematical rigour'' by proving the existence of true but unprovable propositions. I refer readers interested in the technical details of this proof to the relevant section of Chapter 4. The intelligence which enables us to see or understand the proof, for example, of a theorem, is non-algorithmic. The intellect ''sees the point'' instantaneously. The intellect is a power of the soul, it operates beyond the temporal and spatial domains; the intellectual or cognitive act is in Smith's sense, therefore, a vertical act.

To be continued.

In our next post, we reveal how Dr Smith calls on us to jettison Galilean, Cartesian and Newtonian assumptions, so as to become philosophically literate once again...

Visual Perception is Vertical: James Gibson's discovery

We resume our series of posts reviewing Dr Wolfgang Smith's 2019 monumental monograph: Physics & Vertical Causation, the End of Quantum Reality. (Angelico Press, 2019, also available on Amazon Kindle)

For further reading on this and related material, see the Philos-Sophia Initiative website.

Houghton Mifflin; First Edition edition (1950)

Today's post will focus on how we ''see''. For many generations, the official view was that the eye is in effect a camera and that what we see is based upon a retinal image. Dr Smith introduces at this point the remarkable empirical research and insight of a cognitive psychologist at Cornell University, named James Gibson (1904-1979). Gibson argued that what we perceive visually is not an image but ''invariants'' in light reflected from the ''ecological environment''. Astonishingly, this terminology corresponds more or less precisely to the terms of Smith's own analysis. The ''ecological environment'' corresponds to Smith's corporeal domain and the ''invariants'' that we ''pick up'' in the act of visual perception are none other than the forms. This means that we perceive not a mere image or effect of that world but the very forms that constitute its reality.



In Smith's own words:

Gibson’s discovery ... amounts thus to a scientific refutation of the Cartesian doctrine: specifically its epistemology, which affirms that the object of perception constitutes a mere phantasm or “thing of the mind.” Even as Heisenberg’s physics has demonstrated that there exists actually no such thing as a Cartesian res extensa, so has Gibson’s discovery toppled the second pillar of the Cartesian edifice: the misbegotten notion of res cogitans.

1979. Available via Amazon Kindle

Accordingly, visual perception cannot be understood by merely looking at the retina and neurons in the brain. They are indeed part of a process but when I see an apple, for example, my visual perception is more than the sum of the various parts of the process. Smith points out that this ''more'' is none other than the ''soul.''

Scientists, such as Francis Crick, had noted that they had been able to see how the brain's neurons and particular processes can take a picture apart but were unable to see how they put it together as an identifiable entity. Smith then concludes this particular section with an elegant simplicity.

The soul is ontologically not subject to the bounds of space. The soul can therefore be present to each cell in the body, not in some fragment of itself, but in its entirety. This ubiquity of its wholeness is therefore the ''more'' referred to in the preceding paragraph. Apart from transcending the bounds of space, however, the soul transcends the bounds of time. This was revealed in Gibson's experiments comparing perception of still scenes with moving scenes. He concluded that we perceive motion not ''moment by moment'' but all at once - the only way that motion can be perceived. Were it to be otherwise, we would not see motion but a succession of images.

Visual perception, therefore, constitutes a vertical act, transcending time and space; it is effected by means of the soul which does in truth have access to eternity.

Interruptions

My review of Dr Smith's Vertical Causality was interrupted when I downloaded and read 'Living Machines' by Dr E Michael Jones
[Ignatius Press paperback published 1995; Fidelity Press Kindle e-book published 2019]

My apologies to those following the posts on Dr Smith, but I found 'Living Machines' impossible to put down. I do not have time for even a short review, but I can highly recommend it not only for the masterly effortlessness of his style but most particularly for the insights afforded by his penetrative research and courageous analysis. I wish I had studied this before lecturing my French clients on 'modern' London architecture.

I can also highly recommend another book by the same remarkable author for the very same reasons I have included in the previous paragraph.:

'Degenerate Moderns: Modernity As Rationalized Sexual Misbehavior'
[Ignatius Press paperback published 1993; Fidelity Press Kindle e-book published 2019]

DNA, CSI and vertical causality

We continue in this series of posts our review of Dr Wolfgang Smith's 2019 monograph: Physics & Vertical Causation, the End of Quantum Reality. (Angelico Press, 2019, also available on Amazon Kindle)

For further reading on this and related material, see the Philos-Sophia Initiative website.

One of the most extraordinary discoveries of the twentieth century, says Dr. Stephen Meyer, director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Wash., was that DNA actually stores information—the detailed instructions for assembling proteins—in the form of a four-character digital code.

Signature in the Cell, by Dr Stephen Meyer (HarperOne, 2009).



Meyer states that research has demonstrated the complete absence of any attraction between the four letters of the DNA code themselves. From this, he concludes that, there being nothing chemically that forces them into any particular sequence, the sequencing has to come from outside the system.

Dr Smith adds another dimension to the arguments discussed by Meyer and others, when he writes:

The connection between free will and vertical causation came to light abruptly in 1998 when a mathematician named William Dembski published a remarkable theorem. Having introduced the decisive concept of “complex specified information” or CSI, Dembski stunned the scientific world by proving—with complete mathematical rigour—that no physical process, be it deterministic, random or stochastic, can produce CSI. But this means, in our terminology, that what has thus been disqualified from producing CSI is none other than horizontal causality! Wherever, therefore, we encounter the production of CSI, we have documented an act of vertical causation.

To be continued

Three Vertical Powers of the Soul

We continue in this series of posts our review of Dr Wolfgang Smith's 2019 monograph: Physics & Vertical Causation, the End of Quantum Reality. (Angelico Press, 2019, also available on Amazon Kindle)

For further reading on this and related material, see the Philos-Sophia Initiative website.

Smith begins Chapter 4 with a rallying cry calling us to engage in combat with the ''tyranny of horizontal causation'' by revealing the power of '' vertical causation'', defeating thereby the scientistic materialism that has restricted man's scientific operations to merely secondary causalities at work in the lower extremities of the integral cosmos. With this in mind, he shifts our attention away from fundamental physics to man's active and cognitive faculties. These are traditionally regarded as the ''powers of the soul''.

Reminding us of basic metaphysical conceptions, Smith explains that a corporeal entity is what it is by virtue of its its ''substantial form''. This determines whether the entity is animate or inanimate. In the case of an animal, the form is called the anima or soul (life-giving principle). In man, it is called the rational soul, precisely by reason of man's active and cognitive faculties. After death, when the soul has separated from the body, what remains of the body is a composite of inanimate substances, prone to decompose.

If it is a substantial form that founds each corporeal entity (animate or inanimate), what is it that founds the substantial form itself? St Thomas answers that it is the ''act-of-being'', which is like a form in regard to all that is in the entity. This act-of-being bestows to each entity being and a power to act with an efficacy of its own. Smith calls this act-of-being the ''cosmogenetic Act itself''' and refers to the efficacy bestowed by this Act as an ''efficacy delegated by God.'' This efficacy entails a capacity on the part of created beings to achieve effects by way of vertical causation.

In the case of human beings, the prime example of such vertical causation is man's ''free will''. An act of the will may be said to be free by virtue of the fact that it is not effected by a chain of external causes, but by the soul or anima, which acts from within and therefore by way of vertical causation.

At this point, Smith makes a bold and decisive move when he asserts that ''verticality'' applies not only to causation but to cognition as well. In addition to the active powers (powers to act) delegated by God, man is also endowed with ''cognitive'' powers. Man, for example, is endowed with the ability to make use of perception, whether visual (sensual) or intellectual (such as understanding the proof of a mathematical theorem). Both modes of perception, he argues, demand a super-temporal act, since the transcendence of time is a defining characteristic of his sense of the ''vertical''.

This section of the chapter concludes by noting that the capacity of corporeal objects to activate vertical causality (VC) increases as we ascend from the inorganic through the plant and animal domains and up to the highest (sub-angelic) domain, that of humans.

In the next section, we shall be considering the dramatic implications for vertical causation resulting from William Dembski's 1998 theorem about ''complex specified information.''

To be continued.

Finding the Hidden Key (pt 3)

This is the sixth of my posts reviewing Dr Wolfgang Smith's 2019 monograph: Physics & Vertical Causation, the End of Quantum Reality. (Angelico Press, 2019, also available on Amazon Kindle)

For further reading on this and related material, see the Philos-Sophia Initiative website.

We had reached the point in Chapter three where Smith, having introduced the notion of ''verticality'' in the mutual relationship between materia prima, the physical world and the corporeal world, reminds his readers of the categorical distinction between qualities and quantities. Quantities, he maintains, derive from below and qualities from above, the latter transmitting supernal essences into this nether world. In the Cartesian bifurcation, however, the res extensae correspond to the quantitative (physical) domain which means that qualities are perforce relegated to the entirely subjective domain of res cogitantes. This relegation has the effect in practice of casting out the very essence of the everyday world in which we live and move and have our being. At this point, Smith makes an astonishing but very cogent claim:

The crucial and almost universally undiscerned fact is that the Cartesian reduction of the corporeal world to “matter”—the denial, thus, of its “formal” component, its inherent morphe—has seemingly emptied the world of everything that answers to the higher cravings of the human heart. And of all that has thus been forfeited, the loss of the sacred is beyond doubt the most tragic of all: for that proves to be the privation we cannot ultimately survive.

René Descartes.

The Cartesian weltanschaung continued its victorious march right up to the twentieth century and then something utterly unexpected occurred. The discoveries consequent upon the investigations of the ''quantum world'' revealed that within it there is no substance and thus no being whatsoever.

By 1925, it had become clear that there is no such thing as a ''fundamental particle'' and no such thing as res extensae at all. The Cartesian world-view collapses like a house of cards.

After Frans Hals [Public domain] circa 1649-1700. Louvre Museum.



Smith concludes this chapter with another bold line of enquiry. The rediscovery of the corporeal world, he argues, is only the first step in the resolution of the quantum quandary. The ''supra-physical'' or corporeal world requires a ''supra-physical'' mode of causation. He uses the word ''horizontal'' to describe the modes of causality familiar to physical science, operating in time. In contradistinction, the mode of causality operating in the corporeal world acts instantaneously and ''above time'' and this supra-physical causality may fittingly be called ''vertical'' causality.

In a neat piece of reasoning, Smith argues as follows. Horizontal causation can operate only within its own (physical) ontological plane. But, an act of measurement entails an interaction between the physical plane and a corporeal instrument, from a different ontological plane. Therefore, the act of measurement cannot be attributed to horizontal causation. It must be attributed to vertical causality (VC). Acts of VC appear to be occurring ubiquitously, involving the vertical action of a corporeal object ''X'' on a physicsal object ''SX''. The physical object SX is invariably constrained by its corporeal counterpart to exclude superpositions incompatible with the corporeal nature of X. This explains why cricket balls cannot bi-locate and cats cannot be both dead and alive (the ''Schrödinger paradox'').

The most profoundly significant fact of all, however, is reserved by Smith for a fitting finale to this remarkable chapter.

...the effect of vertical causation emanating from a corporeal object X is by no means limited to the immediate vicinity of X, but can in principle encompass all of space!

This gives to VC a ''well-nigh miraculous efficacy'': it is ubiquitous, it acts instantaneously and its effect is not diminished by spatial separation. VC proves to be not only higher but incomparably more powerful than the modes of causality hitherto known to physics which stem from the lower, sub-corporeal domain.

In the next post, we shall move on to Chapter 4: Three Vertical Powers of the Soul. Smith invites us ''to shift our attention, from fundamental physics to the opposite end of the scala naturae, to investigate the active and cognitive faculties of mankind, in the expectation that these will prove in fact to be vertical, that is to say, supra-temporal in their mode of action.''


To be continued.

Finding the Hidden Key (pt 2)

This is the fifth of my posts reviewing Dr Wolfgang Smith's 2019 monograph: Physics & Vertical Causation, the End of Quantum Reality. (Angelico Press, 2019, also available on Amazon Kindle)

We finished yesterday with Smith's ontological distinction between corporeal and physical objects, together with their corresponding planes or domains. He raises at this point the question of how a physicist can make the transition from one domain to the other; what 'bridge' would be employed for this purpose? To answer this question, he introduces a form of shorthand. Let every corporeal object X be assigned its corresponding physical object SX. X and SX are 'as different as night and day', since X has a host of qualitative attributes but SX has none since it is described in exclusively mathematical terms. The physicist accordingly must make two “crossings” of the bridge: a theoretical transition from X to SX, complemented by an empirical return from SX to X. The physicist, he notes, does have something to say about the corporeal domain too, because it derives its quantitative content from the physical.

The discussion now proceeds to a number of surprising but highly significant statements on the distinction between the corporeal and the physical.

(1) The modus operandi of physics has for its object the physical; physics, then may be said ''to have eyes only for the physical.'' This flies in the face of most physicists' conflation of the physical and the corporeal.
(2) What distinguishes corporeal entities from the physical is that they exist.
(3) The physical does not coincide with the corporeal but constitutes a sub-existential domain. Heisenberg himself placed the quantum particles ontologically “just in the middle between possibility and reality.” They recall the potentiae (potencies) of Aristotle.
(4) Quantum particles as potentiae are actualized in the very act of measurement. A quantum particle is not actually a particle - which is to say it does not exist - until it interacts with a corporeal instrument of measurement.
(5) The physical universe constitutes a sub-existential domain. which underlies the corporeal world and determines its quantitative attributes.

Aristotle. After Lysippos. Roman Copy [Public domain]

The focus now shifts to a quite remarkable synthesis or harmonisation of Smith's insight into physics and quantum theory, on the one hand, and the metaphysics of Aristotle and his disciples, on the other. The following passage is worth quoting in full:

...the notion of an ontological realm or stratum “beneath” the corporeal proves to be integral to our metaphysical heritage. It springs in fact from the seminal recognition that corporeal being entails, not one, but two fundamental principles: something called hyle or materia, plus morphe or form, to put it in Aristotelian terms. Everything in creation hinges upon these two complementary principles: the paternal,[1] exemplified by form, and the maternal corresponding to materia (it seems our very language testifies to this fact [1]). The doctrine known as hylomorphism proves thus to be—not the mere invention of Aristotle—but the expression of a universal truth, which in one form or another constitutes in fact the sine qua non of every sound ontology.

Smith's tour de force now brings us back to the idea of 'verticality' mentioned in the earlier posts. His mastery of Eastern and Western traditions enables him to state unequivocally that the distinction between form and matter has been represented iconically 'since time immemorial' as a vertical distinction.

morphe/form

hyle/materia

Morphe/form is conceived pictorially as above hyle/materia. This notion of 'verticality', of 'high' and 'low' is not a merely subjective conception. The morphe/hyle dichotomy is nothing less than the metaphysical foundation of the world.

Smith extends this idea of ''verticality" by presenting a picture of the integral cosmos as a hierarchy of ''horizontal'' planes:

the corporeal
the physical
materia prima

We shall end today's post with Smith's recapitulation that the physical universe proves to be a sub-existential domain, situated ontologically between materia prima and the corporeal plane, noting that he describes the latter as ''pure receptivity'' which does not actually exist.

The next post will conclude our review of Chapter 3 and will contain further, ground-breaking  insights from the remarkable mind of Dr Wolfgang Smith. Here is a taster:

...the cosmos presentifies (sic) not only entities, but values, that it speaks to us not only of “things,” but of beauty and goodness—and ultimately, as Plato informs us, of the Beautiful and the Good itself. We need to remind ourselves thus of the categorical distinction between qualities and quantities, which proves to be immeasurably profound: for whereas quantities derive in truth “from below”—in keeping with the Scholastic dictum “numerus stat ex parte materiae”—it can in truth be said that qualities stem “from above,” that in fact they transmit the light of supernal essences into this nether world.

[1]  In corroboration of what I initially considered an unlikely etymological link made by Smith, it is interesting to compare ''pattern'' with ''material'' in this context. In its respective etymologies, the Complete OED links  ''pattern'' to ''patron' to 'pater' (father) and links  ''material'' to ''matter'' to ''mater'' (mother).  Accordingly, when a pattern and material are coupled together in dressmaking, the fruit of their union is a garment, eg a pair of trousers or a skirt!

Physics & Vertical Causation: Finding the Hidden Key (pt 1)

This is the fourth of my posts reviewing Dr Wolfgang Smith's 2019 monograph: Physics & Vertical Causation, the End of Quantum Reality. (Angelico Press, 2019, also available on Amazon Kindle). For further reading on this and related material, see the Philos-Sophia Initiative website.

We concluded the last post on a note of uncertainty, not to say bewilderment, as physics seemed to have been reduced to “a mystic chant over an unintelligible universe.” Smith now proceeds to analyse the possible cause of this unintelligibility by taking us into the domain of philosophy.

To resolve the perceived problems, it is true that quantum theorists had called into question a number of fundamental assumptions, even the principles of logic. With remarkable acuity, Smith identifies a major philosophic postulate that has been missed altogether by the theorists or observed but dismissed as unchallengeable.

René Descartes.

This concerns what is sometimes called Cartesian[1] bifurcation, which Smith describes as:

(the) splitting of the real into two mutually exclusive compartments: an external world comprised of so-called res extensae or “extended entities,” and an internal and subjective domain consisting of res cogitantes or “thinking entities.”



After Frans Hals [Public domain] circa 1649-1700. Louvre Museum.



Smith prays in aid Whitehead and Heisenberg as he makes the bold assertion that it is this very Cartesian partition that accounts for the fact that no-one understands quantum theory. Having noted that the Cartesian view has a stranglehold within the scientific community, he goes on to compare it to Democritean atomism which shares the notion that “by convention there exist colour, the sweet, and the bitter, but in reality only atoms and the void”. The key issue, it would seem, is to understand how the physicist's sense perception can transcend the subjective realm of res cogitantes so as to perceive not a mere image but the object itself, the world of res extensae. He claims that, philosophical considerations aside, James Gibson has produced an “ecological theory of visual perception” which falsifies the Cartesian premise on scientific grounds. This will be elaborated in a later chapter.

Smith now poses a significant question: if we can perceive the external world (eg, the red apple in my hand), is it possible to interpret physics in non-bifurcationist terms? His answer is in the affirmative and he introduces an important ontological distinction at the outset of his reasoning: objects are either corporeal or physical. The distinction is ontological because it results from two fundamentally different ways of knowing:

• direct perception
• measurement (or mensuration), the modus operandi of physics.

These two categories define two distinct ontological planes or domains:

• the corporeal, accessed by sense perception; and
• the physical, accessed through the discoveries of physics.

A philosophic grasp of the quantum realm depends upon this distinction. In a footnote, Smith elaborates that the physical plane is actually constructed by the physicist's measurement and quotes Heisenberg's statement that physics deals not with Nature as such but with our relations to Nature.

To be continued.


[1] René Descartes: (1596 – 1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist.

The Quantum Enigma

Wolfgang Smith. Eugene O' Neill [CC BY-SA 4.0]

This is the third of my posts reviewing Dr Wolfgang Smith's 2019 monograph: Physics & Vertical Causation, the End of Quantum Reality. (Angelico Press, 2019, also available on Amazon Kindle)
For further reading on this and related material, see the Philos-Sophia Initiative website.

We finished the last post with Smith's observation that no one seems to have so much as the slightest notion of what in plain fact results from the discoveries of quantum theory—whether, for example, there actually exists a “quantum world” or not. Most physicists seem unaware that something is seriously amiss as they oscillate between two contradictory worldviews, the pre- and post-quantum.
A few have proposed and counter-proposed the most extraordinary explanations to resolve the enigma, with no resolution yet in sight.  This led Richard Feynman to declare: “No one understands quantum theory.”[1]


Amongst the bizarre proposals is the 'multiverse' approach: every possible outcome of every possible measurement is realized, howbeit it in a different universe. Another approach proposes that ordinary logic ceases to apply in the quantum realm.

Smith argues in this second chapter that there is one interpretation that beyond all doubt holds precedence over all others regarding the nature of quantum reality: the Copenhagen interpretation, originally conceived by Niels Bohr.[2] Its pivotal tenet is that a quantum system does not own its dynamic attributes (such as position or momentum). This interpretation was confirmed and advanced by John von Neumann[3] in 1932. If an ordinary object is one that owns its dynamic attributes, then there are no ordinary objects in the quantum realm.

In the remainder of this chapter, Smith considers the arguments of John Stewart Bell[4] and Albert Einstein, the latter being very unhappy with the quantum theory's replacement of Newtonian determinism by probabilistic physics. Neuman's theorem was modified to exclude not all ordinary objects from the quantum realm, but only ordinary objects that were local. Bell developed a theorem which proved that there are no local objects, ie, reality is non-local. Physical objects must be non-local. This means they have the capacity to communicate with each other instantaneously. This has been described by Berkeley physicist Henry Stapp[5] as  “the most profound discovery of science.”

By this point, most readers will have become somewhat bewildered. Nobel Prize-winning luminaries seem to have been advancing knowledge to such a degree that it eventually surpasses human understanding. “No one understands quantum theory.”[1] Smith will lead us further in search of the 'hidden key' but advises us of the need for a certain humility at the outset of our enquiry:

...even to speak of a “quantum world” is to overstep what we actually know: a “quantum description” is all we can legitimately claim. And that description is moreover geared to the business of physics: beyond this, its intended and rightful application, no one indeed “understands quantum theory”!

[1] Richard Feynman: (1918 – 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, as well as in particle physics. Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.
[2] Niels Bohr (1885 – 1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr was also a philosopher and a promoter of scientific research.
[3] John von Neumann (1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, and polymath. Generally regarded as the foremost mathematician of his time[2] and said to be "the last representative of the great mathematicians"
[4] John Stewart Bell: (1928 – 1990) was a physicist from Northern Ireland, and the originator of Bell's theorem, an important theorem in quantum physics
[5]  Henry Pierce Stapp (1928 ) is an American mathematical physicist, known for his work in quantum mechanics, the proofs of strong nonlocality properties, and the place of free will in the "orthodox" quantum mechanics of John von Neumann.

The Origin of Quantum Theory

Wolfgang Smith. Eugene O' Neill [CC BY-SA 4.0]

This is the second of my posts reviewing Dr Wolfgang Smith's 2019 monograph: Physics & Vertical Causation, the End of Quantum Reality. (Angelico Press, 2019, also available on Amazon Kindle)
For further reading on this and related material, see the Philos-Sophia Initiative website.

Smith introduces the quantum theory in Chapter 1, explaining that since the days of Sir Isaac Newton  (1643-1727) it had been supposed that matter reduces ultimately to Democritean[1] atoms. With the refinement of experimental means, these would eventually present themselves as objects to be observed and measured.

As the experimental means achieved further refinement, however, it became apparent that these so-called atoms are not in fact tiny “particles” at all. What came to light is something that exhibits both particle and wave characteristics, which is to say that it is actually neither a particle nor a wave.

“One was left thus with something,” writes Smith, “that can no longer be pictured or conceived at all—except possibly in mathematical terms. By the time the 'smoke had cleared,' physicists were obliged to accept the fact that their near-perfect Newtonian science had, in a sense, vanished into thin air... the most perfect physics the world had ever seen turned out to be 'a kind of mystic chant over an unintelligible universe,' in Whitehead’s telling words.”[2] 

Werner Heisenberg. Bundesarchiv. CC-BY-SA 3.0

What was needed was a brand new physics and this was discovered in 1925 by three scholars, independently. The greatest genius among them was Werner Heisenberg.[3] He noted that physicists seemed to work on the assumption that a physical system owned its own dynamic attributes - a position or momentum, say - prior to the act of measurement by the scientist. This, he argued, was an unverifiable hypothesis. He recalled Lord Kelvin’s definition of physics as “the science of measurement”—and realized in a flash that the mystery of quantum physics resides precisely in the act of measurement itself.

Smith summarizes Heisenberg's discovery in the following terms:

“...what a quantum system owns in place of actual dynamic attributes, according to Heisenberg’s theory, is an array of probabilities, which could be represented as the elements of an infinite matrix.”

The resultant “matrix mechanics” has now been in direct or indirect use for close to a century and has never yet yielded a false result. Despite the apparent perfection of quantum theory,  Smith observes that no one seems to have so much as the slightest notion what in plain fact it means—whether, for example, there actually exists a “quantum world” or not.

This is the fascinating enigma that, together with related questions, the author will explore in subsequent chapters.


[1] Democritus (c. 460 – c. 370 BC) was an Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher remembered today for his formulation of an atomic theory of the universe.
[2] Alfred North Whitehead (1861 – 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. In his early career Whitehead wrote primarily on mathematics, logic, and physics. His most notable work in these fields is the three-volume Principia Mathematica (1910–1913), which he wrote with former student Bertrand Russell.
[3]  Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901 – 1976), a German theoretical physicist and one of the key pioneers of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a breakthrough paper. In the subsequent series of papers with Max Born and Pascual Jordan, during the same year, this matrix formulation of quantum mechanics was substantially elaborated. He is known for the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which he published in 1927. Heisenberg was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the creation of quantum mechanics".

Book review: Physics & Vertical Causation, the End of Quantum Reality

“One of the best-kept secrets of science,” physicist Nick Herbert writes, “is that physicists have lost their grip on reality.” [Chapter 2, Physicists Losing Their Grip, p. 15]

Dr Wolfgang Smith explores this and a number of other 'secrets of science' in his recently published monograph: Physics & Vertical Causation, the End of Quantum Reality (Angelico Press, 2019, available on Amazon Kindle). The book accompanies a film which is due to be released in Autumn 2019: The End of Quantum Reality, featuring Dr Smith and produced by Rick Delano, producer of 'The Principle'.

Wolfgang Smith graduated from Cornell University at the age of eighteen with majors in physics, philosophy, and mathematics. He received his master's degree in theoretical physics from Purdue University and was subsequently employed at Bell Aircraft Corporation as an aerodynamicist. After taking his Ph.D. in mathematics from Columbia University, Smith held faculty positions at M.I.T., U.C.L.A., and Oregon State University. His published work includes Cosmos and Transcendence, The Wisdom of Ancient Cosmology, and The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key.

Physics & Vertical Causation is a veritable tour de force, reflecting the unique background of Dr Smith in mathematics, science, traditional (including scholastic) philosophy as well as eastern philosophy and tradition. His style is eminently readable for the non-specialist such as this reviewer, although one or two passages require very careful reading and reflection.

The book is relatively short (150 pages in hardback) and is divided into seven chapters. For a thought-provoking review, please visit the Philos-Sophia Initiative website.

Rather than writing a formal review, I aim in this and subsequent posts to give readers a flavour of Dr Smith's remarkable, countercultural insights.

For further reading on this and related material, see the Philos-Sophia Initiative website.

Preface

The stated aims of Smith's monograph are:

1. to serve as an introduction to a hitherto unrecognized mode of causation which proves moreover to be ubiquitous: what he refers to, namely, as “vertical causality;” and
2. to bring into unity the multiple strands pursued in the books he has written over the years, in a way that manifests what may rightfully be termed “the big picture.”

The short preface plunges immediately into what Smith concedes are abstruse and difficult realms in order to provide a synoptic overview of the territory we are about to enter, with the promise that the subsequent chapters will proceed by clear and simple steps.

What is vertical causality (VC)? This notion of VC will be represent for most readers an unknown and Smith starts by guiding us from the 'known' to this 'unknown.'

It is therefore helpful at the outset to note the meaning he gives to horizontal causality (HC) which, despite the novelty of the word horizontal in this context, represents an idea readily intelligible to the general reader: HC is causality ascertained in time by means of the physical sciences through observation and measurement. The physicists themselves inhabit the familiar, everyday world discernible to us through our corporeal senses. Smith views this everyday world as an ontological domain, where 'we live and move and have our being'.  He calls it the corporeal domain (CD).

Another domain, dimensionally distinct from the CD, is proposed by Smith. Its existence, he says, is general but has been particularly highlighted by quantum physics - where measurements are made of the behaviour of matter and energy at the molecular, atomic, nuclear, and even smaller microscopic levels. Smith calls this second domain, where, physicists carry out their work of observation and measurement, the physical domain (PD).

He argues that when physicists in the CD make acts of measurement, the very acts of measurement entail a transition from the CD to the PD. The transition is between two different ontological domains and is therefore an ontological transition. As an ontological transition, it can only be achieved instantaneously.

There are numerous phenomena that physics, making use of HC, cannot comprehend. One such phenomenon relates to the ontological stratification of the cosmos. The corporeal world, for example, divides into the mineral, plant, animal and anthropic domains. These domains are distinguished ontologically in ways physics cannot comprehend for the very reason that physics deals with HC within the PD. Smith argues that the domains (mineral to anthropic) are actually examples of the effects of VC.

It may be noted that the non-mineral domains of living beings are three in number. This number will recur throughout the monograph. Man himself (the microcosm), for example, is made up of corpus, anima and spiritus. The cosmos itself is ontologically trichotomous.

The primordial Cosmic Icon

This cosmic trichotomy is illustrated by an ancient icon representing the cosmos (the macrocosm) consisting of a circle in which the circumference corresponds to the corporeal world (subject to space and time), the centre to the spiritual or “celestial” realm (subject to neither time nor space), and the interior to the intermediary (subject to time alone).

And so that centre—that seeming “point,” having neither extension in space nor duration in time, which thus appears to be “the least”—proves to be actually “the greatest of all”: impervious to the constraints of space and the terminations of time, it encompasses in truth every “where” and every “when,” and can therefore be identified as the nunc stans, the omnipresent “now that stands.”


It may be helpful to recall Euclid's definitions of  'point' and 'circle': A point is that which has no part. A circle is a plane figure contained by one line such that all the straight lines falling upon it from one point among those lying within the figure equal one another. And the point is called the centre of the circle.

The omnipresent 'now that stands' is often pictured as something far away and high above, but the icon makes it possible to picture it as being omnipenetrant, like a universal centre or apex present within every being as its ultimate centre. It follows that every being (or cosmic existent) has an ontological 'within' centred on that Apex (Smith capitalises the 'a').

The Creation of Adam. Michaelangelo. 1511. Sisitine Chapel. [Public Domain]

The point of contact or 'touching point' between the two centres suggests the substantial form of Thomist philosophy. This is a fascinating hint as to Smith's discussion of how ideas in Aristotle and Aquinas may well resolve some of the conundra emerging from quantum physics.



VC does not act in time but acts necessarily from one of these centres, either as a cosmogenetic act from the Apex (the universal centre) or as an act from the centre of a particular being (a cosmic agent).

Smith's studies of the cosmic icon led him to discern certain metaphysical equations each of which entailed a corresponding metaphysical theorem, the whole forming a Platonist metaphysics of the integral cosmos. He covers this in his last chapter.

To be continued.