Janus
Page 31
Firstly there is the unity in things whereby each thing is at one
with itself, consists of itself, and coheres with itself. Secondly,
there is the unity whereby one creature is united with the others
and all parts of the world constitute one world. [35]
* For the influence of this conception on Elizabethan philosophy
and poetry, see The Sleepwalkers, Part One, Ch. II.
In the terms of the present theory, the first half of the above quotation reflects the working of the self-assertive, the second of the self-transcending or integrative tendency, on a universal level.
We may also compare Pico's statement with the consensus of contemporary physicists: 'It is impossible to separate any part of the universe from the rest.' The essence of both quotations, separated by four centuries, is a holistic view of the universe which transcends physical causality.
11
One of the best-kept secrets of the universe relates to the question how the sub-atomic micro-world of particles, which are at the same time wavicles, which defy strict determinism and mechanical causation -- how this ambiguous 'undulating carpet of foam' gives rise to the solid, orderly macro-world of everyday experience ruled by strict causality.
The modern scientist's answer is that this seemingly miraculous feat of creating order out of disorder must be seen in the light of the theory of probability or the 'law of large numbers'. But this law, like Pauli's Exclusion Principle, is not explainable by physical forces; it hangs, so to speak, in the air. A few examples will illustrate the point.
The first two are classic cases quoted from Warren Weaver's book on the theory of probability. [36] The statistics of the New York Department of Health show that in 1955 the average number of dogs biting people reported per day was 753; in 1956, 73.6; in 1957, 73.5; in 1958, 74.5; in 1959, 72.4. A similar statistical reliability was shown by cavalry horses administering fatal kicks to soldiers in the German army of the last century; they were apparently guided by the so-called Poisson equation of probability theory. Murderers in England and Wales, however different in character and motives, displayed the same respect for the laws of statistics: since the end of the First World War, the average number of murders over successive decades was: 1920-9, 3.84 per million of the population; 1930-9, 3.27 per million; 1940-9, 3.92 per million; 1950-9, 3.3 per million; 1960-9, approx 3.5 per million.
These bizarre examples illustrate the paradoxical nature of probability, which has puzzled philosophers ever since Pascal initiated that branch of mathematics -- and which von Neumann, the greatest mathematician of our century, called 'black magic'. The paradox consists of the fact that the theory of probability is able to predict with uncanny precision the overall result of a large number of individual events, each of which is in itself unpredictable. In other words, we are faced with a large number of uncertainties producing a certainty, a large number of random events creating a lawful total outcome.
But paradoxical or not, the law of large numbers works; the mystery is why and how it works. It has become an indispensable tool of physics and genetics, of economic planners, insurance companies, gambling casinos, and opinion polls -- so much so that we take the black magic for granted. Thus when faced with such bizarre examples of probability-lore as the dogs or cavalry horses, we may be mildly puzzled or amused, without realizing the universal nature of the paradox and its relevance to the problem of chance and design, freedom and necessity.
In nuclear physics we find striking analogies to the unpredictable dogs producing predictable statistics. A classic example is radioactive decay, where totally unpredictable radioactive atoms produce exactly predictable overall results. The point in time at which a radioactive atom will suddenly disintegrate is totally unpredictable both theoretically and experimentally. It is not influenced by chemical or physical factors like temperature or pressure. In other words, it does not depend on the atom's past history, nor on its present environment; in the words of Professor Bohm, 'it does not have any causes', it is 'completely arbitrary in the sense that it has no relationship whatsoever to anything else that exists in the world or that ever has existed' (italics in the original). [37] And yet it does have a hidden, apparently acausal relationship with the rest of the world, because the so-called 'half-life' period of any grain of a radioactive substance (i.e. the time required for half of the atoms in the grain to disintegrate) is rigorously fixed and predictable. The half-life of uranium is four and a half million years. The half-life of radium A is 3.825 days. The half-life of thorium C is 60.5 minutes. And so on, down to millionths of seconds.
However, there may be fluctuations in the rate of decay of the grain; at some stages on the road to the half-life date there might be an excess or a deficit of decayed atoms which threatens to upset the time-table. But these deviations from the statistical mean will soon be corrected, and the half-life date rigorously kept. By what agency is this controlling and correcting influence exerted, since the decay of individual atoms is unaffected by what goes on in the rest of the grain? How do the dogs of New York know when to stop biting and when to make up the daily quota? How are the murderers in England and Wales made to stop at four victims per million? By what mysterious power is the roulette ball induced, after a glut of 'reds', to restore the balance in the long run? By 'the laws of probability' (or 'the law of large numbers') we are told. But that law has no physical powers to enforce its dictates. It is impotent -- and yet virtually omnipotent.
It may seem that I am labouring the point out of sheer perversity, but this paradox is indeed vital to the problem of causality. Since the causal chains which lead to the decay of individual atoms are ostensibly independent from each other, we must either assume that the fulfilment of the statistical prediction that my sample of thorium C will have a half-life of 60.5 minutes is itself due to blind chance -- which is absurd; or we must take the plunge and opt for some alternative hypothesis on the speculative lines of an 'acausal connecting agency', which is complementary to physical causality in the sense in which particle and wavicle, 'mechanical' and 'mental' complement each other. Such an agency would operate in different guises on different levels: in the shape of 'hidden variables' filling in the gaps in causality on the sub-atomic level; coordinating the activities of the physically independent thorium C atoms to make them respect the half-life date; bringing like and like together in the 'confluential events' of seriality and synchronicity; and perhaps generating the 'psi-field' of the parapsychologist.
This may sound like a tall proposition, but is in fact no taller than the paradoxical phenomena on which it is based. We live submerged in a universe of 'undulating quantum foam' which ceaselessly creates weird phenomena by means transcending the classical concepts of physical causation. The purpose and design of this acausal agency is unknown, and perhaps unknowable to us; but intuitively we feel it somehow to be related to that striving towards higher forms of order and unity-in-variety which we observe in the evolution of the universe at large, of life on earth, human consciousness, and lastly science and art. One ultimate mystery is easier to accept than a litter-basket of unrelated puzzles.
In his classic essay What is Life? which I have quoted before, Erwin Schrödinger took a similar line. He called the connecting link between the totally unpredictable sub-atomic events and their exactly predictable collective result 'the "order from disorder" principle'. He frankly admitted that it is beyond physical causation:
The disintegration of a single radioactive atom is observable
(it emits a projectile which causes a visible scintillation on a
fluorescent screen). But if you are given a single atom, its probable
lifetime is much less certain than that of a healthy sparrow. Indeed,
nothing more can be said about it than this: as long as it lives
(and that may be for thousands of years) the chance of its blowing
up within the next second, whether large or small, remains the
; same. This patent lack of individual determination nevertheless
results in the exact exponential law of decay of a large number of
radioactive atoms of the same kind. [38]
Robert Harvie, co-author (with Sir Alister Hardy and myself) of The Challenge of Chance, commented on this passage by Schrödinger:
Orthodox quantum theory attempts to resolve this paradox by asserting
the probabilistic nature of matter at the microscopic level. But a
further paradox remains -- that of probability itself. The laws of
probability describe how a collection of single random events
can add up to a large-scale certainty, but not why. Why do
not the million nuclei explode at once? Why should we expect that
a symmetrically balanced penny will not fall 'heads' on every toss
from now to eternity? The question is evidently unanswerable . . .
The 'order from disorder' principle seems to be irreducible,
inexplicably 'just there'. To ask why is akin to asking 'Why is the
universe?' or 'Why has space three dimensions?' (if indeed it has).
[39]
In the present theory, the 'order from disorder' principle is represented by the integrative tendency. We have seen that this principle can be traced all the way back to the Pythagoreans. After its temporary eclipse during the reign of reductionist orthodoxies in physics and biology, it is once more gaining ascendancy in more sophisticated versions. I have mentioned the related concepts of Schrödinger's negentropy, Szent Györgyi's syntropy, Bcrgson's élan vital, etc.; one might add to the list the German biologist Woltereck who coined the term 'anamorphosis' -- which von Bertalanffy adopted -- for Nature's tendency to create new forms of life, and also L. L. Whyte's 'morphic principle', or 'the fundamental principle of the development of pattern'. What all these theories have in common is that they regard the morphic, or formative, or syntropic tendency, Nature's striving to create order out of disorder, cosmos out of chaos, as ultimate and irreducible principles beyond mechanical causation.*
* Although most of them do not expressly invoke acausal factors,
these are implied in regarding the formative tendency as
'irreducible'.
The present theory is even more hazardous by explicitly suggesting that the integrative tendency operates in both causal and acausal ways, the two standing in a complementary relationship analogous to the particle-wave complementarity in physics. It is accordingly supposed to embrace not only the acausal agencies operating on the sub-atomic level, but also the phenomena of parapsychology and 'confluential events'. We have seen that ESP and 'synchronicity' often overlap, so that a supposedly paranormal event can be interpreted either as a result of ESP or as a case of 'synchronicity'. But we are perhaps mistaken when we try to make a categorical distinction between the two. Classical physics has taught us that there are various manifestations of energy, including kinetic, potential, thermal, electrical, nuclear and radiant energy which can be converted into one another by suitable procedures, like interchangeable currencies. The present theory suggests that in a similar way telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis and synchronicity are merely different manifestations under different conditions of the same universal principle -- i.e., the integrative tendency operating through both causal and acausal agencies. How this is done is beyond our understanding; but at least we can fit the evidence for paranormal phenomena into the unified design.
12
Among the basic requirements for the validation of a scientific experiment are its repeatability and predictability. Paranormal events, however, whether produced in the laboratory or spontaneously, are unpredictable, capricious and relatively rare. This is one of the reasons why sceptics feel justified in rejecting the results of some forty years of rigorously controlled laboratory experiments in ESP and PK, in spite of the massive statistical evidence which, in any other field of research, would be considered as sufficient proof for the reality of the phenomena.
But the criterion of repeatability applies only when the experimental conditions are essentially the same as in the original experiment; and with sensitive human subjects the conditions are never quite the same in terms of mood, receptivity, or emotional rapport between subject and experimenter. Besides, ESP phenomena nearly always involve unconscious processes beyond voluntary control. And if the phenomena are in fact triggered by acausal agencies, it would be naive to expect that they can be produced at will.
There is, however, another explanation for the apparent rarity and capriciousness of paranormal phenomena, which is of special interest in our context. It was, I believe, originated by Henri Bergson and has been taken up by various writers on parapsychology. Thus, for instance, H. H. Price, former Wykeham Professor of Logic in Oxford:
It looks as if telepathically received impressions have some
difficulty in crossing the threshold and manifesting themselves in
consciousness. There seems to be some barrier or repressive mechanism
which tends to shut them out from consciousness, a barrier which is
rather difficult to pass, and they make use of all sorts of devices
for overcoming it . . . Often they can only emerge in a distorted
and symbolic form (as other unconscious mental contents do). It is a
plausible guess that many of our everyday thoughts and emotions are
telepathic or partly telepathic in origin, but are not recognized
to be so because they are so much distorted and mixed with other
mental contents in crossing the threshold of consciousness. [40]
The Cambridge mathematician, Adrian Dobbs, commenting on the extract I have quoted, went straight to the heart of the matter:
This is a very interesting passage. It evokes the picture of either
the mind or the brain as containing an assemblage of selective
filters, designed to cut out unwanted signals on neighbouring
frequencies, some of which get through in a distorted form, just as
in ordinary radio reception. [41]
Cyril Burt, former Professor of Psychology, University College, London, took up the same idea:
Our sense organs and our brain operate as an intricate kind of
filter which limits and directs the mind's clairvoyant powers,
so that under normal conditions attention is concentrated on just
those objects or situations that are of biological importance for
the survival of the organism and its species . . . As a rule, it
would seem, the mind rejects ideas coming from another mind as the
body rejects grafts coming from another body. [42]
At this stage, the reader may have experienced a feeling of déjà vu, because earlier on I discussed some other 'filter-theories' related to the mechanisms of perception and the process of evolution. In fact, the hypothesis that there is a filtering apparatus which protects us against 'unwanted' ESP signals is merely an extrapolation from what we know about normal, sensory perception. We remember William James's famous 'blooming, buzzing multitude of sensations' which are constantly bombarding our sensory receptors, and particularly the eyes and ears. Our minds would be engulfed by chaos if we were to attend to each of these millions of stimuli impinging on them. Thus the central nervous system, and the brain, have to function as a multilevelled hierarchy of scanning, filtering and classifying devices 'which eliminate a large proportion of the sensory input as irrelevant "noise", and assemble the relevant information into coherent patterns before it is presented to consciousness'. By analogy, a similar filtering apparatus might protect our rational minds against the 'blooming, buzzing multitude' of messages, images, intuitions and coincidental happenings in the 'psycho-magnetic field' surrounding us.
We can draw a further analogy between the filtering hierarchies which protect the mind from irrelevant stimuli of sensory or extrasensory o
rigin, and the genetic micro-hierarchies which protect the hereditary blueprint in the chromosomes against biochemical intrusions and harmful mutations which otherwise would play havoc with the stability and continuity of the species (see above, pp. 200 ff). Moreover, I also felt emboldened to suggest the existence of a Lamarckian micro-hierarchy of selective filters, which prevents acquired characteristics from interfering with the hereditary endowment -- except for those select few which respond to some vital need of the species, resulting from persistent pressures of the environment over many generations, until they seep through the filter and become part of the hereditary endowment of the human embryo, like the thick skin on its soles. This is undeniably an acquired characteristic which has become hereditary -- yet in conformity with the prevailing dogma we are asked to believe that it happened by pure chance.
In fact, the Lamarckians, as we have seen, found themselves in the same type of predicament as the parapsychologists: they were unable to produce a repeatable laboratory experiment. Even apparently clear-cut cases of Lamarckian inheritance were open to different interpretations, to polemics pursued with quasi-theological passions, and as a last resort, to accusations of fraud. Moreover, the Lamarckians were unable to provide a physiological explanation for the inheritance of acquired characteristics -- just as the parapsychologists are unable to produce a physical explanation of ESP phenomena.