Reflections on Uncertainty
The idea that we cannot measure quantum particles with a degree of certainty must be unsettling for some. Perhaps if I were a physicist I would feel some measure of dissatisfaction with the Heisenberg principle as far as my right brain thinking goes. On a greater scale, it seems that anyone who derives a feeling of stability with every increment of certainty they obtain from the world would be feeling less stable with the idea that the Universe is inherently uncertain based on this principle.
Yet, the entire idea of certainty is a little bit absurd if you think about it. I believe that when you measure something you must consider that your results are only certain relative to the tool you have used to measure this something with. I suppose I feel that the human mind can never be absolutely objective to begin with so we must always consider that we can only know what we are built to understand and all we know about he universe will be forever confined to how we have constructed the path to this knowledge.
The word "certainty" itself puzzles me a little bit. When we use this word in the context of science, it seems to imply that we have found an answer and that answer has been achieved through very linear methods of application. This assumes that a linear mode of thinking is the superior method to access the truths of the physical universe. How can that be? How can we leave out an entire realm of thinking that considers the overall pattern or texture of the universe?
I recently came across a science radio program that covered the area of cognitive processing used in decision making. It seemed that certain people who had experienced brain tumors in their temporal region had lost considerable ability to process emotions. These people had retained all of their other cognitive abilities and appeared very normal. However, given the loss of emotional processing you would think that these people would be brutally pragmatic and rational in the way they interface with the world. (Which uncovers our assumption that emotion and reason are divorced from one another). As it turned out, those who had this particular affliction had the hardest time making decisions about even the tiniest thing like which color shirt to wear. One man lost his job because he could not get anything done. He would spend hours deciding which pen to use at the office. It turns out that emotion fuels decision making even in seemingly inconsequential ways.
I use this example to illustrate how interconnected our emotional and rational brains really are. They are coupled together in a beautiful display of interdependence. Just as Qi is the commander of Blood and Blood is the mother of Qi, is reason the commander of emotion and emotion the mother of reason? How does this fit in with the idea of certainty? Well, it just shows how complex and interdependent our process of thinking is and how even a concept like certainty must be questioned and considered when it comes to how we perceive the world. We are all conscious beings with incredibly expansive ways of looking at matter and the universe, but we must always consider the framework of the human mind and how certainty is only so relative to the tool with which it has been measured, including the human mind.
Causality
Causality is a principle that we have a lot of faith in. We must. We must believe that events occur and respond to other events. In order to effect change we need to have faith that what we are doing is going to have a response. In medicine, we put faith in different modalities to remedy an affliction. In politics we pray that our guy wins so that we can see changes in the way our society runs itself. We put faith in causality on a small scale as well. We have faith that when we push a button on the elevator it will take us to a certain floor.
I think where we get into interesting areas is when we place high importance on one link in a chain of events and call that the cause of the rest of the chain of events. We can get into trouble when we do this, for instance take a tomato. I think we get into a little bit of trouble when we reduce the benefits of a tomato (or any food) to a phytochemical. A tomato has a wonderful phytochemical called lycopene. We have a tendency to say, "let's take the lycopene out of the tomato and put it into a pill and sell it as a anti-oxidant that fights DNA damage, aka cancer". We know that foods that contain lycopene have these benefits. But is the lycopene the absolute cause of these benefits? What about the rest of the tomato? What about the unifying matrix of the tomato that came into being out of the universe in a perfect form to feed the human body?
Is the Universe weird?
Yes, the universe is weird. The universe is a strange, unpredictable, weird place. The universe is the embodiment of creativity, non-duality, and mystery.
