Notes
1. In recent years,
physicists have suddenly discovered what they have called the Anthropic
Principle, a conception that many present-day physicists regard not just
as a speculative idea but as a serious scientific principle, not to be
treated lightly. The principle has been stated in several forms
(Harris:1991).
2. The Participatory
Anthropic Principle is prompted by the Copenhagen interpretation of the
quantum theory, initiated by Neils Bohr (Kothari:1990). Briefly, it
follows from this that intelligent beings, through their observation and
measurements, must participate in the actualisation of the universe at
large. The obvious difficulty with this contention is that human bodies
and their sense-organs, as well as the measuring instruments and any
apparatus they may use for experimentation, are macroscopic objects made
up of the microscopic entities that quantum physicists investigate. If
this were the case, the physical universe could not come to be until
observed; and until it existed there could be no observers because they
are consequent upon the generation of life, which again dependent on the
prior occurrence of physico-chemical processes. If physical reality
depends on the existence of mind, and mind depends on the prior
existence of physical reality, neither can exist unless both can come
into being simultaneously. For, although measurement requires the
coupling of the quantum system to be measured with some macroscopic
instrument, once it has been so connected the entire system, including
the measuring device, can be regarded as a single quantum system,
indeterminate as to its state until the measurement is made and
observed. But this again is a subjectivist position. At any rate,
scientists have finally realised the obsolescence of the Copernican
outlook with respect to human mentality, and the implications of
recognising the continuity of matter with mind in a unified world
(Harris, Ibid).
3. Every whole is a
system, however primitive; every system is a whole, structured in
accordance with a universal principle of order. That, in consequence,
specifies itself in a scale of forms that differ consecutively in the
degree of their adequacy to its explicit wholeness. But the mention here
is not of abstract universals, say represented by a genus under which
particulars are contained. Undoubtedly this logical schema has useful
applications, but its underlying metaphysical assumption is that the
real consists of a fortuitous collection of atomic particulars, mutually
related externally only. This kind of assumption was encouraged by
Newtonian physics, followed by the empiricist philosophers of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — there may be common properties
but the elements are related externally only. But contemporary physics
has abandoned this view, and has adopted one in which the relations
between things and processes and the terms that they relate are
intrinsically dependent upon one another, so that they are inseparable
in a unified system. A principle of this kind is universal because its
influence prevails throughout the system and is universal to its parts.
There is thus immanence and transcendence in this concrete universal
system.
Relations of any kind,
whether they are in this internal or are external in the sense that they
fall between their terms and leave them unaffected can be apprehended
only by a conscious subject, because what stands in relation must be
grasped all together and as a whole. It follows that elements in
relation must either be objects of some consciousness or must, as a
complex totality, be conscious themselves. This is strictly correct, if
by existence one means fully actualised being; but, although a
relational complex is only explicit at the level of consciousness, there
can be lower levels, prior to consciousness and requisite for its
emergence in the order of nature — existing implicitly, having potency
and latent inter-relativity. These are phases in the dialectical scale
prior to mind, through which the natural whole brings itself to
consciousness by its inherent nisus to self-completion (Harris, Ibid).
4. The reference now is
to organismic genetics, for which there is enough evidence, say
adaptation and adjustment to environmental conditions is inherent in the
very nature of life. To be selected, a system must be better adapted for
survival than others with which it competes for the available energy and
sustenance. Moreover, geneticists have established that single genes do
not control or determine single characteristics, but that the chromosome
functions as a whole, as does, in fact, the entire genome. It is now
apparent that "survival value" is equivalent to more efficient
self-maintenance and more completely self-determining wholeness. What
evolves is always the organic system and nothing less; and what
evolution produces is increased self-determining adaptation, increased
capacity for relevant variation and selective reaction to circumstances,
in short, increased versatility and freedom. A whole with these
characteristics is a more adequate manifestation of the self-specifying
universal expressing itself in the organism as well as in the cosmos,
than is any inorganic purely physical or chemical whole. Organic systems
of this kind more fully reflect the nature of the principle of
organization immanent in life and in the universe as such, and approach
more nearly its free self-determination (Harris, Ibid).
5. Basically, all
behaviour is instinctive, and purposive in that it pursues a definite
goal characteristic of the particular instinct — eating, mating,
migrating, nesting, etc. Behaviour may be characterized by relevant
variation, as it blossoms in the higher species, into sensory-motor,
perceptual, and intelligent learning. It is an informed activity, in
terms of structural organization and perceptual enlightenment not to
specific stimuli alone but a response to a total situation, which must
be grasped as whole if the behaviour is to be appropriate. The inner,
mental aspect of instinctive behaviour and its intelligent outcome
belongs to a further phase of the self-differentiation of the universal
whole; one that renders it aware of itself and its own relational
structures. Behaviour is foreshadowed below the mental level in the
living processes of metabolism and physiology which, as they evolve,
fold back upon themselves to produce new wholes and more developed
forms. When the human level is reached, the cognitive capacity of
discrimination and definition, comprehension, this aspect attains to the
pitch of explicit self-consciousness, thought, the principle and agency
of organization — inherent from the start and is itself the immanent
principle ordering the cosmos as a whole. The part played by
consciousness in animal and human activity is important in order to
understand behaviour in the context of evolution (Harris, Ibid).
6. It was at the end of
the nineteenth century that the Newtonian ‘paradigm’ obstructing
scientific progress, was broken by a new revolution, which required a
more holistic approach; and this came with relativity and quantum
theories. Neither of these could disregard the observer. For relativity,
the relative velocity of the observer determines the value of every
measurement, and for quantum theory, the observer and the measurement of
specific quantities have become inseparable from the very actuality of
elementary particles. The reality of elementary particles is restricted
to the act of observation by means of instruments that are themselves
composed of multitudes of such particles, and by observers who have
evolved from organic species similarly composed. Thus the reality of the
elements is made to depend on the activity of that to which they are
elementary. Reference is to Copenhagen interpretation of the quantum
theory — Neils Bohr, Schroedinger wave function, Heisenberg’s
Indeterminacy principle, Bell’s Theorem, Henry Stapp’s work and so
on; all these works show that the unity of the universe and the apparent
dependence of physical reality upon subjective experience are two
aspects of a single fact). It is now being suggested that reflective
awareness, in the guise of observation and interpretation, is
constitutive of the very being of the universe. It goes beyond both
subjectivism (dispensing with physical reality altogether) and
phenomenalism (that leaves reality beyond our ken as an unknowable
thing-in-itself) (Weber:1986).
If the universe is an
indivisible whole, and as such must by its very nature be complete, and
if, as has been argued, the completion of a whole necessarily involves
its being brought to consciousness, the danger of falling into solipsism
is averted. For although hidden variables have been ruled out, the
indeterminate properties of particles are admitted by the Copenhagen
theories to be latent, or potential, before they are observed. In short,
the actualization of what is potential at the physical and biological
levels should await the activity of observation and the efflorescence of
knowledge. This in no way precludes the prior reality of the physical
and biological world, because the very experience of a physical and
biological world as an indivisible systematic whole implies and
necessitates the self-differentiation of that whole as a scale of forms,
in the more elementary of which what emerges at later stages is already
implicit. The existence of both macroscopic and microscopic worlds is
thus established.
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