Spinoza, Leibniz and Quantum Cosmology
Presented at
Quantum Mind 2007
Salzburg, Austria
by
Dr. Laura E. Weed
The College of St. Rose
432 Western Ave
Albany, NY 12211, USA
(01) (518) 458-5328
Spinoza, Leibniz and Quantum Cosmology
Introduction
During the Scientific Revolution, the mechanism of Isaac Newton and the René Descartes triumphed over the more complex epistemological and metaphysical systems of Baruch Spinoza and G.W. Leibniz because the Spinozistic and Leibnizian systems seemed to speculate about unnecessary entities and forces, violating Ockham’s simplicity rule for scientific theories. Clearly, much of what Spinoza and Leibniz wrote is simply out of date and insufficiently prescient to be of any help with contemporary quantum mechanics. However, I am proposing that at least three of their ideas, which I will articulate in this paper, would be helpful in constructing a metaphysics and epistemology for the quantum world. The three general ideas that I hope may appear less speculative and extraneous to contemporary scientists than they did to their counterparts of previous centuries are:
1. Metaphysically, the cosmos is organic: Parts of the universe and wholes, both local and cosmological, interrelate, forming an organic cosmos, rather than a congeries of compounded components.
2. Epistemologically, perspective limits access to knowledge: The totality of what exists exceeds human faculties and methodologies for gaining knowledge.
3. Perspective skews measurement and temporal scales, undermining
mechanism: The relationships among the varieties of measurement and temporal scales in the universe precludes a meaningful conception of universal mechanical causation.
First, this paper will explore ways in which Spinoza’s attributes and modes, Leibniz’ monads, the electrons in the Bell experiment and Everett’s many-world hypothesis, reflect a structured and self-organizing, holistic and inter-relational cosmos, rather than a world that is a compositional result of adding parts. Second, the paper will explore the methodological and perspectival limits that Spinoza and Leibniz proposed in opposition to the Newtonian and Cartesian faith in the ultimate unity of science. These methodological limits have re-emerged, I shall argue, in the role of the observer in quantum mechanics. Third, I shall argue that the Newton-Descartes concept of global mechanical causation presupposes a uniform, global space-time, across which these causes might unfold. In contrast, the Spinozistic and Leibnizian alternatives consider time to be multi-layered, exhibiting local, regional, macro, micro, and superposed variations that might provide more useful paradigms for understanding the findings of quantum mechanics, such as Feynman’s proton and electron graphs, and the multi-layered character of nature.
1. Nature is organic, not a congeries of compounded components.
For Spinoza, famously, there exists only one substance. He seems to have been motivated to embrace this position by awe at the interrelatedness of the parts of nature. His definitional criteria for something being a substance require complete independence of all other things for any substance-candidate. Yet, only the entire universe, which for him is identical with God, can rate as a self-causing organic whole of this type. In the axiom system he devises in his Ethics, Spinoza claims that he proves that substance is:
a) prior to its affections (prop. 1)[1]
b) unique in its attributes (prop. 5)[2]
c) not produced by any other substance (prop. 6)[3]
d) necessarily existent (prop 7) and necessarily infinite (prop. 8).[4]
e) indivisible (prop. 13)[5]
f) contains its explanation, and its causation, within itself (p. 8)[6]
from all of which he concludes:
\God is the only substance, there cannot be any other one (prop. 14)[7] and
\All that exists is God. (prop. 15)[8]
Whatever one makes of this strange argument, Spinoza is clearly defending a form of metaphysical monism against Descartes’ division of the world into a distinct mental and spiritual layer which is separate from the mechanical and material layer of reality. Spinoza will acknowledge that intellectually distinct laws govern the material and the mental attributes of substance, but since all are metaphysically identical with THE substance,[9] they are ultimately, interdependent and interrelated, not autonomous processes. Each of God’s attributes is conceived through itself, but each ultimately expresses the reality or existence of substance. (prop. 10)[10] Two of God’s attributes, according to Spinoza, are being a thinking thing and being an extended thing. As merely attributes of substance, the mental and the physical must both be contained in substance and conceived through it.[11]
Spinoza’s monism rules out Cartesian dualism as well as the materialist’s proposal that the mental might be reducible to, or eliminable in favor of the material aspects of reality, or conversely, the idealist’s proposal that the material could be eliminated in favor of the mental. Spinoza’s metaphysical position is sometimes characterized as a form of atheistic reductivist materialism, as Jonathan Bennett conceives of it,[12] but more commonly it is thought of as a form of dual-aspect theory, pantheism or panpsychism.[13] We might agree with Steinberg that the repeated references to infinity should be understood to mean, merely, ‘unlimited.’[14] Then we could understand Spinoza’s stress on the priority of substance as endorsement of a form of ‘top-down,’ organic homeostasis as a form of non-mechanical causation. Spinoza says that for something to exist is for it to exhibit a form of power,[15] not all of which can be merely transferred from one object to another in a mechanical way.
Substance must be the ultimate source of power, although its nature differs as it manifests in one attribute or another. If we can imagine an impossible form of prescience for Spinoza, we might claim that Substance must be the unifying principle that accounts for why E=mc2, but that, minimally, also makes the equation self-causing and self-aware. He explicitly argues against Descartes that merely local and mechanical causation could never add up to the power of substance, nor provide the unity needed to account for the uniformity of nature.[16]
For Spinoza, thus, a universe could not be compiled from mechanical parts computationally added together. It is rather the case that the parts have the qualities they have because they are parts of the whole, and it is the qualities and powers of the whole that cause the parts and explain the qualities that the parts exhibit. Mentality and Physicality are two of monistic Substance’s infinite attributes, according to Spinoza. Substance is not limited to these two attributes, but contains all attributes that are possible and conceivable by God, of which there are an infinite number.
In quantum mechanics I see resonances of Spinoza’s infinite attributes in the Everett many-worlds hypothesis. Hugh Everett developed this hypothesis as an account of how superposed alternative states of reality can co exist prior to a wave collapse, which results from an observation, and ‘chooses’ one of the superposed states. John Gribben describes the Everett hypothesis as follows:
Everett’s interpretation is that the overlapping wave functions of the whole universe, the alternative realities that interact to produce measurable interference at the quantum level, do not collapse. All of them are equally real, and exist in their own parts of superspace (and supertime).[17]
Like Spinoza, Everett also, seemed to conceptualize his worlds as representations of all possible states of reality as simultaneously superposed on one another. For both Everett and Spinoza, perspective, not causation, joins the inherently unrelated layers of reality into a monistic thing. Observers create local realities out of universal possibilities.
For Leibniz, reality consists of monads and God. Monads are individual entelechies each of which expresses its own unique nature or hacceicity (essence).[18] So, for Leibniz there is a sense in which each atom of reality is individual, unique, self-determining and (possibly)conscious. Each monad develops according to its own inner nature and contains within itself, from its beginning, its entire past and future.[19] Leibniz claims that monads are ‘windowless,’ by which he means that they have no direct ability to interact with or perceive any other monads.[20] Nevertheless, the entire universe of radically independent monads is woven into a harmonious web of interrelationships by God’s divine providence.[21]
Leibniz rejects the mechanical atoms that compose the material world in Cartesian dualism in favor of this panpsychist[22] view of animated simples, because he believes that there are insuperable problems in the merely mechanical and geometrical view of matter presented by Descartes, Galileo or Newton. In particular, he thinks that a) concepts such as ‘inertia’ and ‘force’ cannot be adequately handled by mechanical and geometrical notions, because they lack principles involving dynamism,[23] b) that the principle of sufficient reason, representing a demand for a complete explanation of an object or event, cannot be satisfied by the mechanical analysis,[24] c) that the principle of the identity of indiscernibles could not distinguish one location in space from another without identifiable individual essences occupying the spaces,[25] and, d) that reality must be continuous; that is, there can be no radical departures, or gaps, in nature.[26]
On the issue of dynamism, Margaret Dauler Wilson points out that Leibniz had reasoned that mechanical and geometrical determination can account only for changes in place. As a result, an existentialist account is needed to explain any other aspect of an entity, or any other change that it might undergo. For Leibniz, the existentialist account required reintroducing the entire scholastic metaphysics including forms, entelechies, final causes, and ultimately the assertion of the entity’s value and moral purpose. [27]
Related to the location-specific nature of mechanical and geometrical principles is Leibniz’ objection that mechanical principles violate the principle of sufficient reason. Modern science, from Galileo to the present has stressed answers to ‘how’ questions and rejected questions that asked ‘why’ something happened. Judea Pearl summarizes Galileo’s Discorsi as consisting of two rules:
One, description first, explanation second—that is the “how” precedes the “why”; and
Two, description is carried out in the language of mathematics; namely, equations.[28]
Leibniz objected that too much was lost in this honing-down of principles. An explanation, for him, had to give a complete account not only of how a thing was formed and moved, but also of why it existed as it did, rather than not existing, or existing in some alternate possible form. He claimed,
…[W]e can find no true or existent fact, without there being a sufficient reason why it is thus and not otherwise.[29]
The principle of sufficient reason required a complete account of all of the causes and effects of a monad, not merely the local antecedent motion that brought it into place. Thus, for any individual independent monad, the sufficient cause had to encompass not just the monad, but God and the whole world, past through future.
I will discuss Leibniz’ identity and continuity issues in the third section of the paper.
One of the consequences of the Cartesian/Newtonian/Galilean world view that Spinoza and Leibniz are rejecting is that all action is local, and specially or temporally separated events can not affect one another. Contemporary quantum mechanics is, however, encountering problems with the Newtonian and Galilean presumptions that reality consists of compounds and functions of point-particles, and that compositionality and motion within a Cartesian grid constitute explanation. Tim Maudlin explains the problem, beginning with Einstein’s attempts at maintaining the modern scientific thesis.
Einstein’s world view held that each region of space-time has its own intrinsic physical state, and that the entire and complete state of the physical universe is specified once one has determined the intrinsic state of each small region.[30]
Bell’s and Aspect’s experiments, however, have cast doubt on the simple spatial relations and compositional constructability of physical states presumed by Einstein and his scientific predecessors. The photons in these experiments are in physically separated states, and yet seem to be communicating with one another at a rate faster than the speed of light. Using Fleming’s theory of hyperplanes to discuss the photon-pair interaction, Maudlin points out that,
…[T]he polarization state of a photon in this theory is not an intrinsic property simply of the space-time region the photon occupies. The photon has a polarization state only as a component of a larger whole, a complete hyperplane. … The singlet state which the photons start out in is non-separable in the technical sense of not being a product of polarization states of the individual particles. That is the polarization of the pair is something over and above the sum of the states of the parts. [31]
Maudlin indicates that a more organic conception of reality is needed to understand the relationship between the photon pairs.
To conclude this section I will reiterate that both Spinoza and Leibniz imposed more substantive demands on the conception of explanation than Descartes, Newton or Galileo did. A complete explanation, for Spinoza, required that a cause be self-contained, and that a substance be self-generating, and so, nothing less than the whole universe could count. For Leibniz, likewise, a monad must contain its whole explanation within itself. These requirements may yet be too demanding for the everyday practice of science, for surely many smaller local explanations and strictly mechanical ones are possible for a wide range of events. It seems however, that to understand nature in depth requires a global perspective in which the organic nature of the whole is understood to be reflected, in some sense, in the modes or entelechies of the parts. A metaphysically thicker conception of the parts is needed to do this. Minimally, self-organizing principles, and organic connections between parts and wholes must be included.
2. Perspective limits access to knowledge
The Cartesian version of rationalism defended a view of all of reality, from the geometrical location of any point in space through the introspective contents of a mind, as epistemologically completely transparent. All one had to do was look or think to know the complete nature of extention or mind. Although both Spinoza and Leibniz are rationalists, both had reservations about the transparency of nature. In particular, both Spinoza and Leibniz thought that one’s perspective on an issue and human limitations limited the types of facts to which one had access, and ultimately, only God could compile a complete, unified science.
Modes are Spinoza’s individual things, such as mid-sized objects, tables, chairs and people, that exist dependently on the attributes of physical extension and mental extension. Ultimately, these mid-sized objects are not real things, but temporary expressions of the infinite attributes, which are, in turn, expressions of the physicality and mentality of substance, or God.[32] As human modes, we can only know the two attributes in which we participate, the physical and the mental, and we cannot even know the manner of the unity that connects these two attributes within ourselves.[33] God or Substance consists of ( ¥ - 2) more attributes. Our ability to conceive or perceive is restricted to our status as modes, pieces of a piece of substance, and is necessarily warped and confused by our partial view.[34] As a rationalist, Spinoza thinks that we can improve our occluded view by using mathematical and scientific reasoning,[35] and that emotions and attachments further occlude our perspective.[36] But no human can see the whole of which we are a minute part.