Janus (40 page)

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]