February 2005

The Uncertainty of the Uncertainty Principle

Thoughts by Guy Dauncey

"Earthfuture is the website for Guy Dauncey, an author, activist, and
sustainable communities consultant who works to develop a positive vision of a
sustainable future, and to translate that vision into action.

Guy is President of the BC Sustainable Energy Association (www.bcsea.org);
Editor of EcoNews, a monthly newsletter that promotes the vision of a
sustainable Vancouver Island; and author of five books, including "Stormy
Weather : 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change" (New Society Publishers,
2001), which won a Nautilus Award at the New York Book Expo in May 2002. He is
currently co-authoring a new book entitled "Cancer: 101 Solutions to a
Preventable Epidemic". www.earthfuture.com"
 

This proposal is either a muddle, based on a misunderstanding of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, or a radical deconstruction of the very foundations of 20th century physics. I need your help to determine which.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle says that when you look at a moving particle (eg an electron), you can discover either its position, or its momentum, but never both. The more accurately you know its position, the less accurately will you be able to know its momentum; and the more accurately you know its momentum, the less accurately will you be able to know its position. This is supposed to derive from the dual wave-particle nature of matter, and is taken as being a fundamental principle of nature, and of all modern physics.

My critique of The Uncertainty Principle derives from simple logic and what I would like to consider clear-thinking. My observation is that if something is moving, it NEVER has any position, and so any attempt to locate its position is doomed to failure.

Imagine something extremely small, and imagine it moving. Now take a tiny moment of time, and consider where the particle is. The 'moment 'of time must have a dimension, to be meaningful - ie it must be 1/10th of a second, or 1/1000th of a second. However small you make the 'moment' of time, it will always have dimension, and during that dimension, the particle will always be moving. You can take the moment of time and shrink it a billionfold, but it will still have dimension, and a moving particle will always cross a certain amount of space during that time. However small the space, you can always magnify it a billionfold to look at it more closely, to observe that it is a distance, and not a 'point'.

Conversely, if you want the particle to have position at a certain 'point' which you can identify, that point too will always have dimension, and the particle will therefore need time to cross it. To prove this, you only have to take the smallest possible point you can ever imagine, and then magnify it a billionfold to discover that it is not a point at all, but a distance, which has dimension.

My interpretation of this (which may be wrong) tells me there is nothing "new" in this at all : the fact that you can never know both the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time is not an enigma, or anything to do with uncertainty at all : it is simply a fact of nature, which needs no explaining.

The belief that it is an enigma which merits having a whole principle named after it, in my opinion, may come from the fundamental assumption built into calculus mathematics which says that you can add an infinite number of infinitely small particles together to create a whole.

For almost all of the larger dimensions, this is effectively true. Calculus works in practice, which is why it has been accepted as a very powerful tool of all mathematical thinking. As soon as you seek to approach the realm of the infinitely small, however, my belief is that the method breaks down, since in reality, the very idea of an infinitely small position or unit of time is a logical impossibility, so any mathematics based on that assumption will yield contrary results.

The problem arises from the desire by the scientists in the 16th century to quantify their results, which stemmed in turn from the need to distinguish between measurable reality (res extensa) and unmeasurable reality (res mens), and thereby to establish a realm of science and investigation which would be free from interference from the church.

The system of calculus that Newton and Leibnitz invented worked brilliantly, and has continued to do so - until you begin to look into the realm of the very small, or of very tiny intervals in time. It is the unquestioned assumption at the heart of calculus that both time and space are measurable which leads scientists into the muddle of Uncertainty.

In essence, however, time is a flow, and not an infinite progression of an infinite number of 'moments'. As such, it is inherently unmeasurable, when you come to consider its essence. There may not be any great 'breakthroughs' that stem from this insight (if it is correct); but nor would there be any need for any such thing as a "principle" of uncertainty ever to be created, because nothing ever is or was uncertain - it is only our desire to seek certainty through mathematics and science that leads us to see uncertainty where it does not exist.

On the other hand, since time is still one of the greatest scientific mysteries, along with the nature of the electron itself ('what IS it ?', as apart from 'How does it behave ?'), this insight may lead to other insights, which may in turn lead to a better understanding of the nature of time, space, movement, speed and relativity.

The belief that everything in nature can be broken down into its component units stems also from the mental habit of reductionism, which has contributed a host of useful insights, but which expresses only half of the wider reality, the other half being concerned with the forces, fields or principles which create organization and wholeness. When we begin to look at time through the spectacles of wholeness, instead of those of reductionism, Uncertainty simply disappears.

At this point, I will sign off, since the next stage in thinking leads me into wondering about the parallels between the essence of time and the essence of consciousness. If there was no change of any kind, would we ever know that time existed, or would we have any reason to invent it, as a concept ? Could consciousness exist without time ? And in the same spirit, when consciousness shifts into a mode of apparent timelessness, is it getting closer to its essence, where it can exist in a realm of spirit in which time and space are simply playthings, to be conjured up or entered at will ?

This line of thought will soon lead me into pondering the physics of angels and their interactions with the realm of time, space and matter, so I had better stop now, in order that my earlier questions are taken seriously, and not dismissed as being unworthy of discussion.

I have been pondering this issue for 20 years; every time I have discussed it with a physicist, they have effectively talked me out of the discussion. Am I mistaken, or is there something here ? I await your thoughts with interest.

Guy Dauncey

Victoria, BC, Canada

www.earthfuture.com

*

I would not have thought to offer you these thoughts, until I saw that you had created a section on Science as a forum to ponder 'innovations' such as this. It also leads me into a further set of thoughts, around time. Einstein has shown that light always moves at the same fixed speed (186,281 miles per second), regardless of the speed of the object from which it is emitted. There may therefore be a "barrier" of some kind, a law of nature which prevents light from moving any faster. The barrier may exist either within the nature of space, or within the nature of light.

Maybe our whole concept of 'space' is based on the illusion that we have of space being the 'empty' realm between two objects, and of the 'space' taken up by the same objects. But all space on Earth is full of something - mainly air. Can there be any space which truly contains nothing ? Or would such 'space', by definition, disappear to nothingness if it was deprived of all of its contents, as a pure vacuum ?

To imagine myself 'beyond' both time and space, I have to imagine a realm of spirit which is so all-encompassing that it would embrace all time and all space within it, as a subset of its reality, a choice to be entered or played with, but not a defining or determining condition.

We (rather, I) know that spirit can  manifest itself as chi, prana, healing energy; and we know that it can act from a body onto another, in the physical realm.

We know that spirit is hiding, and has come along for the ride within each of us, to animate us, to guide us if we so want, and to be there to heal and support us, if we so ask.

And we know that spirit will leave the body when the body is dying, or in a condition where it could die.

There is so much that we do not know : our understanding of the physics of the spiritual realm is comparable to the state of our understanding of the physics of the material realm when the scientific revolution began, four hundred years ago : and our progress to full understanding may potentially take as long before we grasp the true principles of its working.

First, we have to battle to gain even the acceptability of the discussion, just as the early scientists had to do in the 16th and 17th centuries, when they were up against the opposition of the church, and those who felt that even to inquire into the nature of matter was to trespass onto the territory of God, whose works were so wonderful that they were beyond all human enquiry.

However, I did not intend this last section to be published : I am only faintly touching on the skirts of a huge new reality, which lies before us.

 Guy is President of the BC Sustainable Energy Association (www.bcsea.org);
Editor of EcoNews, a monthly newsletter that promotes the vision of a
sustainable Vancouver Island; and author of five books, including "Stormy
Weather : 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change" (New Society Publishers,
2001), which won a Nautilus Award at the New York Book Expo in May 2002. He is
currently co-authoring a new book entitled "Cancer: 101 Solutions to a
Preventable Epidemic". www.earthfuture.com"