A Quantum Theory of Existence

Even if a reason exists, I doubt we can find it.

The past couple of weeks I read Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. Initially this was to supply context for whatever endeavor I am starting. I ended with a tougher question than when I began.

I also thought extensively about how these posts would be organized. I’m going to start with what I have been thinking about and things that I feel are given, axioms maybe. I’ll then work off and beyond those.

In reading a genius discuss the universe as we currently understand it, I am struck with the same conclusion: that no matter what our place in the universe or if there is a reason for all of this, we can never truly put our finger on it, because the closer we examine, the more elusive the answer becomes. Our mind turns in on itself and cannot provide an answer for its own existence.

A Brief History of Time

I am not an astrophysicist. Now that that is out of the way, I can say what struck me about this book. The evolution of thought surrounding the theory of how the universe operates has been a struggle between the forest and the trees. There is a tug of war between the large view, how massive bodies interact with one another, and the small view, how particles interact with one another. As physics stands, these two views do not elicit cooperating theories and therefore create a disconnect in how we discuss the universe, from a scientific perspective. Thus, the search for a “unified” theory of physics persists.

Stephen Hawking and modern physicists pose many different answers to this question that are extremely difficult to comprehend. i.e. superstring theory, the existence of 10 or 26 dimensions, and various space-time bending that suggests the universe is not flat but curved, like the Earth, into a sphere (presumably then if one could travel faster than the speed of light, he could travel in one direction and end up where he started before he began, therefore actually not where he started considering space and time are measurements of the same thing in physics).

All of this said, it seems to me that the large body theory, relativity, must give way to the small body theory, quantum theory, because it is something that we know and can “observe” first-hand. The book seems to suggest this much, as quantum theory threw a wrench in our understanding of the theory of relativity. How quantum theory jives with the theory of relativity is theoretical, so the dialogue is on what theory relativity will submit to in the future.

Quantum theory, simply, concerns the particles that give rise to forces on a molecular level. Think, if a person could pinpoint a particle, he could understand why a body was doing something based on the type of particle that is acting on it. What X force is leading to Y reaction? Heisenberg, unfortunately, found that in attempting to observe a particle, we are giving rise to energy in that particle by virtue of the light that we need to see them. This causes the particle to change positions. So no matter how hard we look, how far down we can dig, we can never pinpoint a particle. The particle jumps and exists in some other position.

It could be that there are several universes and on a large scale, celestial bodies act in the same way that particles do, existing in another place at once. But that is just a musing, because that would also assume some massive observer acting upon those celestial bodies, that exist in universes looking like atoms or molecules (like the end of Men in Black). An unspoken assumption in History of Time is that this all only matters because an intelligent observer gives a damn.

What Are We Looking For?

But, this brings me to my desk. Why do we care? Why is it that any of this matters? Do we want a clearer picture of our universe, to understand why we are here? Or do we want a clearer picture to understand why we want to understand? Hawking discusses God as if He could exist outside the bounds of space-time, whatever that means (those are Hawking’s words, not mine). If a god existed, its existence would clear up everything we could wish to gain from studying the universe, so it would mean that all of this searching is meaningless. It can give us no more knowledge than we need.

I would argue, however, that every human being, every single one of us, wants to understand what is out there in the universe, save the absolutely brainwashed, egotistical, and blind (It is severely egotistical to think that Earth is unique, but that is a discussion for another post). We are intelligent observers and therefore a world exists for us to observe, so we observe it, in its infinitesque glory. But why care?

This is the first question we need to ask ourselves: Why do we care how the universe operates?

We gain knowledge for one, but I believe that it runs deeper than that. The universe is a mystery and if we think about its consequences for the human race long enough, those consequences will hurt our brains. Not to mention lead us to some fairly fatal conclusions. But humans are intelligent and we are always “digging.”

Digging for me means pushing back into our minds to find the source for why we think. We want to know if there is a reason for us that goes beyond a fairy tale. Too often we believe that if not religion, then nothing. That is lazy and is most likely a narrative dreamed up by the dreamers to scare people. Spending time with this question though may lead us to a scary place.

A Quantum Theory of Existence

Digging is difficult. Philosophers have done it for millennia, and where has all that thinking got us? To me, I guess. So here are my thoughts.

A popular position is that humans possess free will. Popular for good reason. The alternative is impossible to prove. It is possible that everything is determined. Initially, theories of the universe attempted to prove this proposition. If we knew how forces affect bodies accurately, we can predict anything. But could that idea apply to human thought?

A reason for existence, which I am using interchangeably with a reason for caring about the universe because practically they are the same (no reason, no caring; no caring, no reason), requires that we either “dig” or “search.” Searching is looking for something outside of us that gives us a reason to exist. This would encompass God or some kind of prime mover; a force, as many early astrophysicists theorized, that made our actions merely equal reactions to actions extending from some place in the universe. Digging, as I mentioned above, is looking inside of our minds, attempting to reason out our existence.

My point here is that digging gives us a “quantum theory of existence;” a reason for why we exist may in fact…exist, but just as that thought is an unintentional pun, so it is with digging. Theoretically, we can refine our questions sharper and sharper, like a microscope, getting us closer to an answer but never reaching it. Because the act of digging, looking for an answer, is an act that must be explained itself. The question becomes infinitely circular. “Why do we think about why we exist?” is paradoxical.

This could be because we are not intelligent enough to refine the question , not that this is about language, but the logical inquiry cannot dissect sharp enough to successfully reason the answer. The very act of questioning is something we are trying to understand. So questioning is not capable of producing an answer.

If X = the reason we exist, the inquiry is “what is X?.” But this question is a function of X, because we must know why we ask the question (which is practically identical to the reason we exist) to solve X. So we have now created a new variable. Assume Y = “What is X?” The function would be f(X) = Y. The new inquiry is “What is Y?” This inquiry is a function of X as well, because we must know X to answer the question. So now assume Z = “What is Y?” the equation becomes f(X) = YZ…. and so on ad infinitum.

The only way to defeat the paradox would be to know X without asking a question. Perhaps the best course of action then would be to stop asking and just live our lives. And as it relates to a large theory, maybe we can never know the ultimate answer we are digging for, so we should focus on the concrete, how bodies interact, how we interact with other humans, to reflect some idea of what we believe the reason for existence to be.

While I set out to create some kind of context, I suppose what I have done is figure out a question that has no answer. But I feel that’s a decent progress. Hopefully this is somewhat meaningful.

-M. G. Finley