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.