From Schrödinger’s Cat to Thomistic Ontology

The Thomist 63 (1999): 49-63 FROM SCHRODINGER'S CAT TO THOMISTIC ONTOLOGY1 WOLFGANG SMITH Hayden, Idaho IAM PLEASED and honored to give this Templeton Lecture on Christianity and the Natural Sciences. I regard the objective of these Lectures as a cultural task of prime importance. I believe that the reputed conflict between science and religion does exist, and is in fact far more serious than one tends to think; but, at the same time, I am persuaded that the conflict arises not from science as such but from a penumbra of scientistic beliefs for which in reality there is no scientific support at all. This oftoverlooked distinction between scientific truth and scientistic belief has long been a special concern of mine. I have, for many years, made it my business to hunt down and ferret out major articles of scientistic belief-not as an academic exercise, but in the conviction that the acceptance of such contemporary dogmas is injurious to our spiritual well-being. I have no doubt that the ongoing de-Christianization of Western society is due in large measure to the imposition ofthe prevailing scientisticworld-view. Meanwhile something quite unexpected and as yet largely unobserved has come to pass: this scientistic world-view, which still reigns as the official dogma of science, appears no longer to square with the scientific facts. What has happened in our century is that unprecedented discoveries at the frontiers of science seem no longer to accord with the accustomed Weltanschauung, with the result that these findings present the appearance of paradox. It seems that on its most fundamental level physics itself has disavowed the prevailing world-view. This science, therefore, can 1 The following lecture was given at Gonzaga University on February 5, 1998. 49 50 WOLFGANG SMITH no longer be interpreted in the customary ontological terms; and so, as one quantum theorist has put it, physicists have, in a sense, "lost their grip on reality."2 But this fact is known mainly to physicists, and has been referred to, not without cause, as "one of the best-kept secrets of science." It implies that physics has been in effect reduced to a positivistic discipline, or, in Whitehead's words, to "a kind of mystic chant over an unintelligible universe."3 Richard Feynman once remarked: "I think it is safe to say that no one understands quantum mechanics." To be sure, the incomprehension to which Feynman alludes refers to a philosophic plane; one understands the mathematics of quantum mechanics, but not the ontology. Broadly speaking, physicists have reacted to this impasse in three principal ways. The majority, perhaps, have found comfort in a basically pragmatic outlook, while some persist, to this day, in the attempt to fit the positive findings of quantum mechanics into the pre-quantum world-picture. The third category, which includes some of the most eminent names in physics, convinced that the pre-quantum ontology is now defunct, have cast about for new philosophic postulates, in the hope of arriving at a workable conception of physical reality. There seem to be a dozen or so world-views presently competing for acceptance in the scientific community. It is not my intention to propose yet another ad hoc philosophy designed to resolve quantum paradox. I intend in fact to do the opposite: to show, namely, that there is absolutely no need for a new philosophic Ansatz, that the problem at hand can be resolved quite naturally on strictly traditional philosophic ground. What I propose to show, in particular, is that the quantum facts, divested ofscientistic encrustations, can be readily integrated into a very ancient and venerable ontology: namely, the Thomistic, which traces back to Aristotle. Rejected by Galileo and Descartes, and subsequently marginalized, this reputedly outmoded medieval speculation proves now to be capable of supplying the philosophic keys for which physicists have been groping since the advent of quantum theory. 2 Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality (Garden City: Doubleday, 1985), 15. 3 Alfred North Whitehead, Nature and Life (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), 10. THOMISTIC ONTOLOGY 51 I First formulated in 1925, quantum mechanics has shaken the foundations of science. It appears as though physics, at long last, has broken through to...