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Causality

Causality is the process of making something happen. Often it denotes a necessary relationship between one event (called cause) and another event (called effect) which is the direct consequence of the first. This two event type of causality is known as accidental causality. Another variety, essential causality, has one event seen in two ways. Aristotle’s example of essential causality is a builder building a house. This single event can be analyzed into the builder building (cause) and the house being built (effect).

The philosophical treatment of causality extends over millennia. In the Western philosophical tradition, discussion stretches back at least to Aristotle, and the topic remains a staple in contemporary philosophy journals.

Though cause and effect are typically related to events, candidates include objects, processes, properties, variables, facts, and states of affairs; which of these make up the causal relata, and how best to characterize the relationship between them, remains under discussion.

According to Sowa (2000), up until the twentieth century, three assumptions described by Max Born in 1949 were dominant in the definition of causality:

1. “Causality postulates that there are laws by which the occurrence of an entity B of a certain class depends on the occurrence of an entity A of another class, where the word entity means any physical object, phenomenon, situation, or event. A is called the cause, B the effect.
2. “Antecedence postulates that the cause must be prior to, or at least simultaneous with, the effect.
3. “Contiguity postulates that cause and effect must be in spatial contact or connected by a chain of intermediate things in contact.” (Born, 1949, as cited in Sowa, 2000)

However, according to Sowa (2000), “relativity and quantum mechanics have forced physicists to abandon these assumptions as exact statements of what happens at the most fundamental levels, but they remain valid at the level of human experience.”

In the case of a mis-attribution of a cause to an effect, the event is known as questionable cause.

Western philosophy

Aristotle

In his Posterior Analytics and Metaphysics, Aristotle wrote, “All causes are beginnings…” , “… we have scientific knowledge when we know the cause…” , and “… to know a thing’s nature is to know the reason why it is…” This formulation set the guidelines for subsequent causal theories by specifying the number, nature, principles, elements, varieties, order of causes as well as the modes of causation. Aristotle’s account of the causes of things is a comprehensive model.

Aristotle’s theory enumerates the possible causes which fall into several wide groups, amounting to the ways the question “why” may be answered; namely, by reference to the material worked upon (as by an artisan) or what might be called the substratum; to the essence, i.e., the pattern, the form, or the structure by reference to which the “matter” or “substratum” is to be worked; to the primary moving agent of change or the agent and its action; and to the goal, the plan, the end, or the good that the figurative artisan intended to obtain. As a result, the major kinds of causes come under the following divisions:

• The material cause is that “raw material” from which a thing is produced as from its parts, constituents, substratum, or materials. This rubric limits the explanation of cause to the parts (the factors, elements, constituents, ingredients) forming the whole (the system, structure, compound, complex, composite, or combination) (the part-whole causation).
• The formal cause tells us what, by analogy to the plans of an artisan, a thing is intended and planned to be. Any thing is thought to be determined by its definition, form (mold), pattern, essence, whole, synthesis, or archetype. This analysis embraces the account of causes in terms of fundamental principles or general laws, as the intended whole (macrostructure) is the cause that explains the production of its parts (the whole-part causation).
• The efficient cause is not the external entity from which the change or the ending of the change first starts. It identifies ‘what makes of what is made and what causes change of what is changed’ and so suggests all sorts of agents, nonliving or living, acting as the sources of change or movement or rest. Representing the current understanding of causality as the relation of cause and effect, this analysis covers the modern definitions of “cause” as either the agent, agency, particular causal events, or the relevant causal states of affairs.
• The final cause is that for the sake of which a thing exists, or is done – including both purposeful and instrumental actions. The final cause, or telos, is the purpose, or end, that something is supposed to serve; or it is that from which, and that to which, the change is. This analysis also covers modern ideas of mental causation involving such psychological causes as volition, need, motivation, or motives; rational, irrational, ethical – all that gives purpose to behavior.

Additionally, things can be causes of one another, reciprocally causing each other, as hard work causes fitness, and vice versa – although not in the same way or by means of the same function: the one is as the beginning of change, the other is as its goal. (Thus Aristotle first suggested a reciprocal or circular causality – as a relation of mutual dependence, action, or influence of cause and effect.) Also; Aristotle indicated that the same thing can be the cause of contrary effects – as its presence and absence may result in different outcomes. In speaking thus he formulated what currently is ordinarily termed a “causal factor,” e.g., atmospheric pressure as it affects chemical or physical reactions.

Aristotle marked two modes of causation: proper (prior) causation and accidental (chance) causation. All causes, proper and incidental, can be spoken as potential or as actual, particular or generic. The same language refers to the effects of causes; so that generic effects assigned to generic causes, particular effects to particular causes, and operating causes to actual effects. It is also essential that ontological causality does not suggest the temporal relation of before and after – between the cause and the effect; that spontaneity (in nature) and chance (in the sphere of moral actions) are among the causes of effects belonging to the efficient causation, and that no incidental, spontaneous, or chance cause can be prior to a proper, real, or underlying cause per se.

All investigations of causality coming later in history will consist in imposing a favorite hierarchy on the order (priority) of causes; such as “final > efficient > material > formal” (Aquinas), or in restricting all causality to the material and efficient causes or, to the efficient causality (deterministic or chance), or just to regular sequences and correlations of natural phenomena (the natural sciences describing how things happen rather than asking why they happen)..

Causality, determinism, and existentialism

Causality has taken many journeys in the minds of human beings for over 3000 years. Determinism and existentialism are but a few of the manifestations of this journey.

The deterministic world-view is one in which the universe is no more than a chain of events following one after another according to the law of cause and effect. To hold this worldview, as an incompatibilist, there is no such thing as “free will“. However, compatibilists argue that determinism is compatible with, or even necessary for, free will.

Existentialists have suggested that people believe that while no meaning has been designed in the universe, we each can provide a meaning for ourselves.

Though philosophers have pointed out the difficulties in establishing theories of the validity of causal relations, there is yet the plausible example of causation afforded daily which is our own ability to be the cause of events. This concept of causation does not prevent seeing ourselves as moral agents.

Indian philosophy

Theories of causality in Indian philosophy focus mainly on the relationship between cause and effect. The various philosophical schools (darsanas) provide different theories.

The doctrine of satkaryavada affirms that the effect inheres in the cause in some way. The effect is thus either a real or apparent modification of the cause.

The doctrine of asatkaryavada affirms that the effect does not inhere in the cause, but is a new arising.

The Buddha, and subsequent Buddhist thinkers such as Nagarjuna, rejected both, instead proposing a middle way.

See Nyaya for some details of the theory of causation in the Nyaya school.

Logic

Necessary and sufficient causes

A similar concept occurs in logic, for this see Necessary and sufficient conditions

Causes are often distinguished into two types: Necessary and sufficient.

Necessary causes:

If x is a necessary cause of y, then the presence of y necessarily implies the presence of x. The presence of x, however, does not imply that y will occur.

Sufficient causes:

If x is a sufficient cause of y, then the presence of x necessarily implies the presence of y. However, another cause z may alternatively cause y. Thus the presence of y does not imply the presence of x.

J. L. Mackie argues that usual talk of “cause,” in fact refers to INUS conditions (insufficient and non-redundant parts of unnecessary but sufficient causes). For example, a short circuit as a cause for a house burning down. Consider the collection of events: the short circuit, the proximity of flammable material, and the absence of firefighters. Together these are unnecessary but sufficient to the house’s destruction (since many other collections of events certainly could have destroyed the house). Within this collection, the short circuit is an insufficient but non-redundant part (since the short circuit by itself would not have caused the fire, but the fire would not have happened without it, everything else being equal). So, the short circuit is an INUS cause of the house burning down.

Causality contrasted with conditionals

Conditional statements are not statements of causality. An important distinction is that statements of causality require the antecedent to precede the consequent in time, whereas conditional statements do not require this temporal order. Confusion commonly arises since many different statements in English may be presented using “If …, then …” form (and, arguably, because this form is far more commonly used to make a statement of causality). The two types of statements are distinct, however.

For example, all of the following statements are true when interpreting “If …, then …” as the material conditional:

1. If George Bush is president of the United States in 2004, then Germany is in Europe.
2. If George Washington is president of the United States in 2004, then Germany is in Europe.
3. If George Washington is president of the United States in 2004, then Germany is not in Europe.

The first is true since both the antecedent and the consequent are true. The second is true because the antecedent is false and the consequent is true. The third is true because both the antecedent and the consequent are false. These statements are trivial examples. Of course, although none of these statements expresses a causal connection between the antecedent and consequent, they are nonetheless all true because no statement has the combination of a true antecedent and false consequent. Logic requires only that truth not be deceptive.

The ordinary indicative conditional has somewhat more structure than the material conditional. For instance, although the first is the closest, none of the preceding three statements seems true as an ordinary indicative reading. But the sentence

• If Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon did not write Macbeth, then someone else did.

intuitively seems to be true, even though there is no straightforward causal relation in this hypothetical situation between Shakespeare’s not writing Macbeth and someone else’s actually writing it.

Another sort of conditional, the counterfactual conditional, has a stronger connection with causality, yet even counterfactual statements are not all examples of causality. Consider the following two statements:

1. If A were a triangle, then A would have three sides.
2. If switch S were thrown, then bulb B would light.

In the first case, it would not be correct to say that A’s being a triangle caused it to have three sides, since the relationship between triangularity and three-sidedness is that of definition. The property of having three sides actually determines A’s state as a triangle. Nonetheless, even when interpreted counterfactually, the first statement is true.

A full grasp of the concept of conditionals is important to understanding the literature on causality. A crucial stumbling block is that conditionals in everyday English are usually loosely used to describe a general situation. For example, “If I drop my coffee, then my shoe gets wet” relates an infinite number of possible events. It is shorthand for “For any fact that would count as ‘dropping my coffee’, some fact that counts as ‘my shoe gets wet’ will be true”. This general statement will be strictly false if there is any circumstance where I drop my coffee and my shoe doesn’t get wet. However, an “If…, then…” statement in logic typically relates two specific events or facts — a specific coffee-dropping did or did not occur, and a specific shoe-wetting did or did not follow. Thus, with explicit events in mind, if I drop my coffee and wet my shoe, then it is true that “If I dropped my coffee, then I wet my shoe”, regardless of the fact that yesterday I dropped a coffee in the trash for the opposite effect –the conditional relates to specific facts. More counterintuitively, if I didn’t drop my coffee at all, then it is also true that “If I drop my coffee then I wet my shoe”, or “Dropping my coffee implies I wet my shoe”, regardless of whether I wet my shoe or not by any means. This usage would not be counterintuitive if it were not for the everyday usage. Briefly, “If X then Y” is equivalent to the first-order logic statement “A implies B” or “not A-and-not-B”, where A and B are predicates, but the more familiar usage of an “if A then B” statement would need to be written symbolically using a higher order logic using quantifiers (“for all” and “there exists”).

Tags: Causality

Determinism

Determinism necessarily entails that humanity or individual humans may not change the course of the future and its events (a position known as fatalism); however, some determinists believe that the level to which human beings have influence over their future is itself merely dependent on present and past. Causal determinism is associated with, and relies upon, the ideas of materialism and causality. Some of the main philosophers who have dealt with this issue are Marcus Aurelius, Omar Khayyám, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, David Hume, Baron d’Holbach (Paul Heinrich Dietrich), Pierre-Simon Laplace,Arthur Schopenhauer, William James, Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and, more recently, John Searle, Ted Honderich, and Daniel Dennett.

Mecca Chiesa notes that the probabilistic or selectionistic determinism of B.F. Skinner comprised a wholly separate conception of determinism that was not mechanistic at all. A mechanistic determinism would assume that every event has an unbroken chain of prior occurrences, but a selectionistic or probabilistic model does not.

The nature of determinism

The exact meaning of the term determinism has historically been subject to rigorous scrutiny and several interpretations. Some people, called Incompatibilists, view determinism and free will as mutually exclusive. The belief that free will is an illusion is known as Hard Determinism. Others, labeled Compatibilists, (or Soft Determinists) believe that the two ideas can be coherently reconciled. Incompatibilists who accept free willbut reject determinism are called Philosophical Libertarians — not to be confused with Political Libertarians. Some feel it refers to the metaphysical truth of independent agency, whereas others simply define it as the feeling of agency that humans experience when they act. Many will agree that determinism is the theory that human choices and actions can be determined from external causes; but free will is the theory that human choices and actions are determined by internal causes: that an individual is the prime mover of his life.

Ted Honderich, in his book How Free Are You? – The Determinism Problem gives the following summary of the theory of determinism:

In its central part, determinism is the theory that our choices and decisions and what gives rise to them are effects. What the theory comes to therefore depends on what effects are taken to be… [I]t is effects that seem fundamental to the subject of determinism and how it affects our lives.

Varieties of determinism

Causal (or nomological) determinism is the thesis that future events are necessitated by past and present events combined with the laws of nature. Such determinism is sometimes illustrated by the thought experiment of Laplace’s demon. Imagine an entity that knows all facts about the past and the present, and knows all natural laws that govern the universe. Such an entity might be able to use this knowledge to foresee the future, down to the smallest detail. Simon-Pierre Laplace’s determinist “dogma” (as described by Stephen Hawking) is generally referred to as “scientific determinism” and predicated on the supposition that all events have a cause and effect and the precise combination of events at a particular time engender a particular outcome. This causal determinism has a direct relationship with predictability. Perfect predictability implies strict determinism, but lack of predictability does not necessarily imply lack of determinism. Limitations on predictability could alternatively be caused by factors such as a lack of information or excessive complexity. An example of this could be found by looking at a bomb dropping from the air. Through mathematics, we can predict the time the bomb will take to reach the ground, and we also know what will happen once the bomb explodes. Any small errors in prediction might arise from our not measuring some factors, such as puffs of wind or variations in air temperature along the bomb’s path.

Logical determinism is the notion that all propositions, whether about the past, present or future, are either true or false. The problem of free will, in this context, is the problem of how choices can be free, given that what one does in the future is already determined as true or false in the present. This is referred to as the problem of future contingents.

Additionally, there is environmental determinism, also known as climatic or geographical determinism which holds the view that the physical environment, rather than social conditions, determines culture. Those who believe this view say that humans are strictly defined by stimulus-response (environment-behavior) and cannot deviate. Key proponents of this notion have included Ellen Churchill Semple, Ellsworth Huntington,Thomas Griffith Taylor and possibly Jared Diamond, although his status as an environmental determinist is debated.

Biological determinism is the idea that all behavior, belief, and desire are fixed by our genetic endowment. There are other theses on determinism, including cultural determinism and the narrower concept ofpsychological determinism. Combinations and syntheses of determinist theses, e.g. bio-environmental determinism, are even more common. Addiction Specialist Dr. Drew Pinski relates addiction to biological determinism:

“Absolutely. It’s a complex disorder, but it clearly has a genetic basis. In fact, in the definition of the disease, we consider genetics absolutely a crucial piece of the definition. So the definition as stated in a consensus conference that was published in the early ’90s, it’s a genetic disorder with a biological basis. The hallmark is the progressive use in the face of adverse consequence, and then finally denial.”

Theological determinism is the thesis that there is a God who determines all that humans will do, either by knowing their actions in advance, via some form of omniscience^[9] or by decreeing their actions in advance. The problem of free will, in this context, is the problem of how our actions can be free, if there is a being who has determined them for us ahead of time.

Determinism with regard to ethics

Often determinism is connected with ethics as an excuse for unethical actions. Hard determinists assert morality as being caused through hereditary and environmental means. Opposition to determinism promotes that without belief in uncaused free will, humans will not have reason to behave ethically. Determinism, however, does not negate emotions and reason of a person, it simply proposes the source of what causes us to fall back on moral behavior. Anyone susceptible to immoral actions from the idea of determinism was susceptible before and does not hold strong moral judgment prior to the idea.

Determinism implies the moral differences between two people are caused by hereditary predispositions and environmental effects and events. This does not mean determinists are against punishment of people who commit crimes because the cause of a person’s morality (depending on the branch of determinism) is not necessarily themselves.

Determinism in Eastern tradition

The idea that the entire universe is a deterministic system has been articulated in both Eastern and non-Eastern religion, philosophy, and literature.

A shifting flow of probabilities for futures lies at the heart of theories associated with the Yi Jing (or I Ching, the Book of Changes). Probabilities take the center of the stage away from things and people. A kind of “divine” volition sets the fundamental rules for the working out of probabilities in the universe, and human volitions are always a factor in the ways that humans can deal with the real world situations one encounters. If one’s situation in life is surfing on a tsunami, one still has some range of choices even in that situation. One person might give up, and another person might choose to struggle and perhaps to survive. The Yi Jing mentality is much closer to the mentality of quantum physics than to that of classical physics, and also finds parallelism in voluntarist or Existentialist ideas of taking one’s life as one’s project.

This theory has also seen its use in popular culture in Japan. In an anime titled xxxHolic the term Hitsuzen is used to describe the Determinism theory although it has a more magical feel to its explanation.

The followers of the philosopher Mozi made some early discoveries in optics and other areas of physics, ideas that were consonant with deterministic ideas.

In the philosophical schools of India, the concept of precise and continual effect of laws of Karma on the existence of all sentient beings is analogous to western deterministic concept. Karma is the concept of “action” or “deed” in Indian religions. It is understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect (i.e., the cycle called saṃsāra) originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Sikh and Buddhist philosophies. Karma is considered predetermined and deterministic in the universe, with the exception of a human, who through free will can (somewhat) influence the future. See Karma in Hinduism.

Determinism in Western tradition

In the West, the Ancient Greek atomists Leucippus and Democritus were the first to anticipate determinism when they theorized that all processes in the world were due to the mechanical interplay of atoms, but this theory did not gain much support at the time. Determinism in the West is often associated with Newtonian physics, which depicts the physical matter of the universe as operating according to a set of fixed, knowable laws. The “billiard ball” hypothesis, a product of Newtonian physics, argues that once the initial conditions of the universe have been established, the rest of the history of the universe follows inevitably. If it were actually possible to have complete knowledge of physical matter and all of the laws governing that matter at any one time, then it would be theoretically possible to compute the time and place of every event that will ever occur (Laplace’s demon). In this sense, the basic particles of the universe operate in the same fashion as the rolling balls on a billiard table, moving and striking each other in predictable ways to produce predictable results.

Whether or not it is all-encompassing in so doing, Newtonian mechanics deals only with caused events, e.g.: If an object begins in a known position and is hit dead on by an object with some known velocity, then it will be pushed straight toward another predictable point. If it goes somewhere else, the Newtonians argue, one must question one’s measurements of the original position of the object, the exact direction of the striking object, gravitational or other fields that were inadvertently ignored, etc. Then, they maintain, repeated experiments and improvements in accuracy will always bring one’s observations closer to the theoretically predicted results. When dealing with situations on an ordinary human scale, Newtonian physics has been so enormously successful that it has no competition. But it fails spectacularly as velocities become some substantial fraction of the speed of light and when interactions at the atomic scale are studied. Before the discovery of quantum effects and other challenges to Newtonian physics, “uncertainty” was always a term that applied to the accuracy of human knowledge about causes and effects, and not to the causes and effects themselves.

Newtonian mechanics as well as any following physical theories are results of observations, and experiments and so they describe “how it all works” within a tolerance. However, old western scientists believed if there are any logical connections found between an observed cause and effect, there must be also some absolute natural laws behind. Belief in perfect natural laws driving everything, instead of just describing what we should expect, led to searching for a set of universal simple laws that rule the world. This movement significantly encouraged deterministic views in western philosophy.

Minds and bodies

Some determinists argue that materialism does not present a complete understanding of the universe, because while it can describe determinate interactions among material things, it ignores the minds or souls of conscious beings.

A number of positions can be delineated:

1. Immaterial souls exist and exert a non-deterministic causal influence on bodies. (Traditional free-will, interactionist dualism).
2. Immaterial souls exist, but are part of deterministic framework.
3. Immaterial souls exist, but exert no causal influence, free or determined (epiphenomenalism, occasionalism)
4. Immaterial souls do not exist — the mind-body problem has some other solution.
5. Immaterial souls are all that exist (Idealism).

Modern perspectives on determinism

Determinism and a first cause

Since the early twentieth century when astronomer Edwin Hubble first hypothesized that redshift shows the universe is expanding, prevailing scientific opinion has been that the current state of the universe is the result of a process described by the Big Bang. Many theists and deists claim that it therefore has a finite age, pointing out that something cannot come from nothing. The big bang does not describe from where the compressed universe came; instead it leaves the question open. Different astrophysicists hold different views about precisely how the universe originated (Cosmogony). The philosophical argument here would be that the big bang triggered every single action, and possibly mental thought, through the system of cause and effect.

Determinism and generative processes

Some proponents of emergentist or generative philosophy, cognitive sciences and evolutionary psychology, argue that free will does not exist. They suggest instead that an illusion of free will is experienced due to the generation of infinite behaviour from the interaction of finite-deterministic set of rules and parameters. Thus the unpredictability of the emerging behaviour from deterministic processes leads to a perception of free will, even though free will as an ontological entity does not exist.^[14][15]

As an illustration, the strategy board-games chess and Go have rigorous rules in which no information (such as cards’ face-values) is hidden from either player and no random events (such as dice-rolling) happen within the game. Yet, chess and especially Go with its extremely simple deterministic rules, can still have an extremely large number of unpredictable moves. By this analogy, it is suggested, the experience of free will emerges from the interaction of finite rules and deterministic parameters that generate infinite and unpredictable behaviour. Yet, if all these events were accounted for, and there were a known way to evaluate these events, the seemingly unpredictable behaviour would become predictable.

Determinism in mathematical models

Many mathematical models are deterministic. This is true of most models involving differential equations (notably, those measuring rate of change over time). Mathematical models that are not deterministic because they involve randomness are called stochastic. Because of sensitive dependence on initial conditions, some deterministic models may appear to behave non-deterministically; in such cases, a deterministic interpretation of the model may not be useful due to numerical instability and a finite amount of precision in measurement. Such considerations can motivate the consideration of a stochastic model when the underlying system is accurately modeled in the abstract by deterministic equations. A truly non-deterministic event is independent of the time and observer, thus it is called intrinsic random event.

Determinism, quantum mechanics, and classical physics

Since the beginning of the 20th century, quantum mechanics has revealed previously concealed aspects of events. Newtonian physics, taken in isolation rather than as an approximation to quantum mechanics, depicts a universe in which objects move in perfectly determinative ways. At human scale levels of interaction, Newtonian mechanics makes predictions that are agreed with, within the accuracy of measurement. Poorly designed and fabricated guns and ammunition scatter their shots rather widely around the center of a target, and better guns produce tighter patterns. Absolute knowledge of the forces accelerating a bullet should produce absolutely reliable predictions of its path, or so was thought. However, knowledge is never absolute in practice and the equations of Newtonian mechanics can exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions, meaning small errors in knowledge of initial conditions can result in arbitrarily large deviations from predicted behavior.

At atomic scales the paths of objects can only be predicted in a probabilistic way. The paths may not be exactly specified in a full quantum description of the particles; “path” is a classical concept which quantum particles do not exactly possess. The probability arises from the measurement of the perceived path of the particle. In some cases, a quantum particle may trace an exact path, and the probability of finding the particles in that path is one. The quantum development is at least as predictable as the classical motion, but it describes wave functions that cannot be easily expressed in ordinary language. In double-slit experiments, photons are fired singly through a double-slit apparatus at a distant screen and do not arrive at a single point, nor do the photons arrive in a scattered pattern analogous to bullets fired by a fixed gun at a distant target. Instead, the light arrives in varying concentrations at widely separated points, and the distribution of its collisions with the target can be calculated reliably. In that sense the behavior of light in this apparatus is deterministic, but there is no way to predict where in the resulting interference pattern an individual photon will make its contribution (see Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle).

Some have argued that, in addition to the conditions humans can observe and the laws we can deduce, there are hidden factors or “hidden variables” that determine absolutely in which order photons reach the detector screen. They argue that the course of the universe is absolutely determined, but that humans are screened from knowledge of the determinative factors. So, they say, it only appears that things proceed in a merely probabilistically-determinative way. In actuality, they proceed in an absolutely deterministic way. Although matters are still subject to some measure of dispute, quantum mechanics makes statisticalpredictions which would be violated if some local hidden variables existed. There have been a number of experiments to verify those predictions, and so far they do not appear to be violated, though many physicists believe better experiments are needed to conclusively settle the question. (See Bell test experiments.) It is possible, however, to augment quantum mechanics with non-local hidden variables to achieve a deterministic theory that is in agreement with experiment. An example is the Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics.

On the macro scale it can matter very much whether a bullet arrives at a certain point at a certain time, as snipers are well aware; there are analogous quantum events that have macro- as well as quantum-level consequences. It is easy to contrive situations in which the arrival of an electron at a screen at a certain point and time would trigger one event and its arrival at another point would trigger an entirely different event. (See Schrödinger’s cat.)

Even before the laws of quantum mechanics were fully developed, the phenomenon of radioactivity posed a challenge to determinism. A gram of uranium-238, a commonly occurring radioactive substance, contains some 2.5 x 10²¹ atoms. By all tests known to science these atoms are identical and indistinguishable. Yet about 12600 times a second one of the atoms in that gram will decay, giving off an alpha particle. This decay does not depend on external stimulus and no extant theory of physics predicts when any given atom will decay, with realistically obtainable knowledge. The uranium found on earth is thought to have been synthesized during a supernova explosion that occurred roughly 5 billion years ago. For determinism to hold, every uranium atom must contain some internal “clock” that specifies the exact time it will decay.^{[citation needed]} And somehow the laws of physics must specify exactly how those clocks were set as each uranium atom was formed during the supernova collapse.

Exposure to alpha radiation can cause cancer. For this to happen, at some point a specific alpha particle must alter some chemical reaction in a cell in a way that results in a mutation. Since molecules are in constant thermal motion, the exact timing of the radioactive decay that produced the fatal alpha particle matters. If probabilistically determined events do have an impact on the macro events—such as when a person who could have been historically important dies in youth of a cancer caused by a random mutation—then the course of history is not predictable from the dawn of time.

The time dependent Schrödinger equation gives the first time derivative of the quantum state. That is, it explicitly and uniquely predicts the development of the wave function with time.

So quantum mechanics is deterministic, provided that one accepts the wave function itself as reality (rather than as probability of classical coordinates). Since we have no practical way of knowing the exact magnitudes, and especially the phases, in a full quantum mechanical description of the causes of an observable event, this turns out to be philosophically similar to the “hidden variable” doctrine.

According to some, quantum mechanics is more strongly ordered than Classical Mechanics, because while Classical Mechanics is chaotic, quantum mechanics is not. For example, the classical problem of three bodies under a force such as gravity is not integrable, while the quantum mechanical three body problem is tractable and integrable, using the Faddeev Equations. That is, the quantum mechanical problem can always be solved to a given accuracy with a large enough computer of predetermined precision, while the classical problem may require arbitrarily high precision, depending on the details of the motion. This does not mean that quantum mechanics describes the world as more deterministic, unless one already considers the wave function to be the true reality. Even so, this does not get rid of the probabilities, because we can’t do anything without using classical descriptions, but it assigns the probabilities to the classical approximation, rather than to the quantum reality.

Asserting that quantum mechanics is deterministic by treating the wave function itself as reality implies a single wave function for the entire universe, starting at the origin of the universe. Such a “wave function of everything” would carry the probabilities of not just the world we know, but every other possible world that could have evolved. For example, large voids in the distributions of galaxies are believed by many cosmologists to have originated in quantum fluctuations during the big bang. (See cosmic inflation and primordial fluctuations.) If so, the “wave function of everything” would carry the possibility that the region where our Milky Way galaxy is located could have been a void and the Earth never existed at all. (See large-scale structure of the cosmos.)

Tags: determinism

Synchronicity

Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events which are causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner. In order to count as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance.

The concept does not question, or compete with, the notion of causality. Instead, it maintains that just as events may be grouped by cause, they may also be grouped by their meaning. Since meaning is a complex mental construction, subject to conscious and subconscious influence, not every correlation in the grouping of events by meaning needs to have an explanation in terms of cause and effect.

The idea of synchronicity is that the conceptual relationship of minds, defined as the relationship between ideas, is intricately structured in its own logical way and gives rise to relationships that are not causal in nature. These relationships can manifest themselves as simultaneous occurrences that are meaningfully related—the cause and the effect occur together.

Synchronous events reveal an underlying pattern, a conceptual framework which encompasses, but is larger than, any of the systems which display the synchronicity. The suggestion of a larger framework is essential in order to satisfy the definition of synchronicity as originally developed by Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung.

Jung coined the word to describe what he called “temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events.” Jung variously described synchronicity as an “acausal connecting principle”, “meaningful coincidence” and “acausal parallelism”. Jung introduced the concept as early as the 1920s but only gave a full statement of it in 1951 in an Eranos lecture and in 1952, published a paper, Synchronicity — An Acausal Connecting Principle, in a volume with a related study by the physicist (and Nobel laureate) Wolfgang Pauli.

It was a principle that Jung felt gave conclusive evidence for his concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious, in that it was descriptive of a governing dynamic that underlies the whole of human experience and history—social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. Events that happen which appear at first to be coincidence but are later found to be causally related are termed as “incoincident”.

Jung believed that many experiences that are coincidences due to chance in terms of causality suggested the manifestation of parallel events or circumstances in terms of meaning, reflecting this governing dynamic.

One of Jung’s favourite quotes on synchronicity was from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, in which the White Queen says to Alice: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards”.

Scientific reasoning

A possible explanation for Jung’s perception that the laws of probability seemed to be violated with some coincidences can be seen in Littlewood’s law.

In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions and avoids information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs. It is a type of cognitive bias and represents an error of inductive inference, or as a form of selection bias toward confirmation of the hypothesis under study or disconfirmation of an alternative hypothesis. Confirmation bias is of interest in the teaching of critical thinking, as the skill is misused if rigorous critical scrutiny is applied only to evidence challenging a preconceived idea but not to evidence supporting it.

Wolfgang Pauli, a scientist who in his professional life was severely critical of confirmation bias, made some effort to investigate the phenomenon, coauthoring a paper with Jung on the subject. Some of the evidence that Pauli cited was that ideas which occurred in his dreams would have synchronous analogs in later correspondence with distant collaborators.

Examples

The French writer Émile Deschamps claims in his memoirs that in 1805, he was treated to some plum pudding by a stranger named Monsieur de Fontgibu. Ten years later, the writer encountered plum pudding on the menu of a Paris restaurant and wanted to order some, but the waiter told him that the last dish had already been served to another customer, who turned out to be de Fontgibu. Many years later, in 1832, Émile Deschamps was at a diner and was once again offered plum pudding. He recalled the earlier incident and told his friends that only de Fontgibu was missing to make the setting complete—and in the same instant, the now senile de Fontgibu entered the room.

In his book Synchronicity (1952), Jung tells the following story as an example of a synchronistic event: “A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream, I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from the outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeud beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata), which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt the urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment. I must admit that nothing like it ever happened to me before or since.”

Simultaneous discovery is the creation of the same new idea at causally disconnected places by two persons at approximately the same time. If, for example, an American and a British musician, having never had anything to do with one another, arrived at the same musical concept, chord sequence, feel or lyrics at the same time in different places, this would be an example of synchronicity. The wardrobe department for The Wizard of Oz unknowingly purchased a coat for character Professor Marvel from a second-hand store, which was later verified to have originally been owned by L. Frank Baum, the author of the novel on which the film was based. The comic strip character Dennis The Menace featuring a young boy in a red and black striped shirt debuted on March 12, 1951 in 16 newspapers in the United States. Three days later in the UK a character called Dennis The Menace, wearing a red and black striped jumper made his debut in children’s comic The Beano. Both creators have denied any causal connection.

Jung wrote, after describing some examples, “When coincidences pile up in this way, one cannot help being impressed by them — for the greater the number of terms in such a series, or the more unusual its character, the more improbable it becomes.”

Synchronicity. (2009, July 26). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:21, July 26, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Synchronicity&oldid=304330957

Tags: synchronicity

Magi

Magi (Latin plural of magus, ancient Greek magos, English singular ‘magian’, ‘mage’, ‘magus’, ‘magusian’, ‘magusaean’) is a term, used since at least the 4th century BCE, to denote a follower of Zoroaster, or rather, a follower of what the Hellenistic world associated Zoroaster with, which was – in the main – the ability to read the stars, and manipulate the fate that the stars foretold. The meaning prior to Hellenistic period is uncertain.

Pervasive throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia until late antiquity and beyond, Greek mágos “magian” was influenced by (and eventually displaced) Greek goēs, the older word for a practitioner of magic, to include astrology, alchemy and other forms of esoteric knowledge. This association was in turn the product of the Hellenistic fascination for (Pseudo-)Zoroaster, who was perceived by the Greeks to be the “Chaldean” “founder” of the Magi and “inventor” of both astrology and magic. Among the skeptical thinkers of the period, the term ‘magian’ acquired a negative connotation and was associated with tricksters and conjurers. This pejorative meaning survives in the words “magic” and “magician”.

In English, the term “magi” is most commonly used in reference to the Gospel of Matthew’s “wise men from the East”, or “three wise men” (though that number does not actually appear in Matthew’s account, and various sources placed the number anywhere between two and twelve). The plural “magi” entered the English language around 1200, in reference to the Biblical magi of Matthew 2:1. The singular appears considerably later, in the late 14th century, when it was borrowed from Old French in the meaning magician together with magic.

Tags: esoteric, magi, zoroastrian

El Badi Palace

El Badi Palace (Arabic: قصر البديع‎ – meaning the incomparable palace) is located in Marrakech, Morocco, and it consists nowadays of the remnants of a magnificent palace built by the Saadian king Ahmad al-Mansur in 1578.

The original building is thought to have consisted of 360 rooms, a courtyard of 135 m by 110 m and a pool of 90 m by 20 m, richly decorated with Italian marbles and large amounts of gold imported from Sudan. It also has a small, underground, tunnel-like jail with about four cells where the king kept his prisoners. Unfortunately, this fairy-like palace, which took approximately 25 years to construct, was torn apart by the Alaouite Sultan Mawlay Ismail who used the materials to decorate his own palace in Meknes. The design of the palace is influenced by the Alhambra in Granada.

In one of the refurbished pavilions, the Koutoubia minbar is now on exhibition.

Tags: Marrakech, Places

Holophusikon

The Holophusikon (or Holophusicon, also known as the Leverian Museum) was a museum of natural curiosities exhibited at Leicester House, on Leicester Square in London, England, from 1775 to 1786 by Ashton Lever. The collection was acquired by a James Parkinson (not the famous doctor) through a lottery in 1786, but continued to be displayed at Leicester House until Lever’s death in 1788. Parkinson then moved the collection to a Rotunda at No. 3 Blackfriars Road, before it was dispersed in an auction in 1806. The museum took its name from its supposedly universal coverage of natural history, and was essentially a huge cabinet of curiosities.

Lever collected fossils, shells, and animals (birds, insects, reptiles, fish, monkeys) for many years, accumulating a large collection at his home at Alkrington, near Manchester. He was swamped with visitors, whom he allowed to view his collection for free, so much so that he had to insist that visitors that arrived on foot would not be admitted. He decided to exhibit the collection in London as a commercial venture, charging an entrance fee.

Lever acquired a lease of Leicester House in 1774, converting the principal rooms on the first floor into a single large gallery running the length of the house, and opened his museum in February 1775, with around 25,000 exhibits (a small fraction of his collection) valued at over £40,000. The display included many natural and ethnographic items gathered by Captain James Cook on his voyages.

Lever charged an entry fee of 5s. 3d., or two guineas for an annual ticket, and the museum had a degree of commercial success: the receipts in 1782 were £2,253. In an effort to draw in the crowds, Lever later reduced the entrance fee to half a crown (2s. 6d.), and was constantly looking for new exhibits. He also set out his exhibits to impress the visitor, as well as (unusually) including educational information. However, he spent more on new exhibits than he raised in entrance fees.

The British Museum and Catherine II of Russia both refused to buy the collection, so Lever obtained an Act of Parliament in 1784 to sell the whole by lottery. He only sold 8,000 tickets at a guinea each – he had hoped for 36,000 - and it was then broken up by a James Parkinson (not the famous doctor). It was displayed at Leicester House until Lever’s death in 1788, at a reduced entrance fee of 1s., and Parkinson then transferred it to a Rotunda at No. 3 Blackfriars Road. Leicester House was then demolished in 1791.

Parkinson sold the collection in lots by auction in 1806. Many items were bought by collectors such as Edward Donovan, Edward Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby and William Bullock; many items also went to other museums, such as the Imperial Museum of Vienna. The contents of the museum are unusually well recorded, from a catalogue of the museum created in 1784, and the sale catalogue in 1806, together with a contemporary series of watercolours of its contents by Sarah Stone.

Tags: collection, museum, natural history

The Egyptian Hall

The Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London, commissioned by William Bullock as a museum to house his collection (which included curiosities brought back from the South Seas by Captain Cook), was completed in 1812 at a cost of £16,000. It was the first building in England to be influenced by the Egyptian style, partly inspired by the success of the Egyptian Room in Thomas Hope’s house in Duchess Street, which was open to the public and had been well illustrated in Hope’s Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (London, 1807). But, unlike Bullock’s Egyptian temple in Piccadilly, Hope’sneoclassical façade betrayed no hint of the Egyptianizing decor it contained. Detailed renderings of various temples on the Nile, the Pyramids and the Sphinx had been accumulating for connoisseurs and designers in works such as Bernard de Montfaucon’s, ten-volume L’Antiquité expliquée et representée en figures (1719-1724), which reproduces, methodically grouped, all the ancient monuments, Benoît de Maillet, Description de l’Égypte (1735), Richard Pococke, A Description of the East and Some Other Countries (1743), and Frederic Louis Norden, Voyage d’Egypte et de Nubie (1755); the first volume of the magisterial Description de l’Egypte (1810) had recently appeared in Paris. The plans for the hall were drawn up by architect Peter Frederick Robinson.^[4] Bullock, who had displayed his collection inSheffield and Liverpool before opening in London, used the hall to put on various spectaculars, from which he made money from ticket sales. The museum was variously referred to as the London Museum, the Egyptian Hall or Museum, or Bullock’s Museum.

The Hall was a considerable success, with an exhibition of Napoleonic era relics in 1816 including Napoleon’s carriage taken at Waterloo being seen by about 220,000 visitors; Bullock made £35,000. In 1819, Bullock sold his ethnographical and natural history collection at auction and converted the museum into an exhibition hall. Subsequently the Hall became a major venue for the exhibiting of works of art; it had the advantage of being almost the only London venue able to exhibit really large works. Usually admission was one shilling. In 1820, The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault was exhibited from June 10 until the end of the year, rather overshadowing Benjamin Robert Haydon’s painting, Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, on show in an adjacent room; Haydon rented rooms to show his work on several occasions. In 1821, exhibitions included Belzoni’s show of the tomb of Seti I in 1821, and James Ward’s gigantic Allegory of Waterloo. In 1822, a family of Laplanders with their reindeer were imported to be displayed in front of a painted backdrop, and give short sleigh-rides to visitors.

The bookseller George Lackington became owner of the Hall in 1825 and went on to use the facilities to show panoramas, art exhibits, and entertainment productions. The Hall became especially associated with watercolours. The Old Water-Colour Society exhibited there in 1821–22 and it was hired by Charles Heath to display the watercolours commissioned by from Joseph Mallord William Turnerforming Picturesque Views in England and Wales. Turner exhibited at the Hall for a number of years and it was also used as a venue for exhibitions by the Society of Painters in Water Colours.

In the “Dudley Gallery” at the Egyptian Hall, the valuable collection of pictures belonging to the Earl of Dudley was deposited during the erection of his own gallery at Dudley House in Park Lane. The room gave its name to the Dudley Gallery Art Society (also known as The Old Dudley Art Society) when they were founded in 1861 and used it for their exhibitions. It was the venue chosen for their first exhibitions by the influential New English Art Club.

By the end of the 19th century, the Hall was also associated with magic and spiritualism as a number of performers and lecturers had hired it for shows. It was also the venue chosen for the showing of some of the first ever films (or animated photographs) to be shown, including those of Albert Smith relating his ascent of Mont Blanc. Later, when the hall came under the control of the Maskelyne family, a more settled policy was adopted and it soon became known as England’s Home of Mystery. Many illusions were staged including the exposition of fraudulent spiritualistic manifestations then being practised by charlatans.

In 1905 the building was demolished to make room for blocks of flats and offices at 170–173 Piccadilly. Muirhead Bone captured its demise in his work The Dissolution of Egyptian Hall. The Maskelynes relocated to the St. George’s Hall in Langharn Place, which became known as Maskelyne’s Theatre.

Tags: arcana, Magic, mystery