Beyond the Newtonian worldview
The clockwork universe
The modern scientific worldview is rooted in the mechanics of Newton, Laplace and
their successors. The core metaphor of the mechanical worldview is the world as a
clockwork mechanism: a complicated array of gears and wheels working together in
perfect unison, so that all their movements are regular, clearly observable and
perfectly predictable. This seemed the perfect model for the movement of the planets
around the sun, which is indeed extremely regular and predictable. This was already
demonstrated in ancient Greece by the Antikythera mechanism (2nd century BC), a
complicated clockwork that functioned like an analog computer. It allowed users to
accurately predict the positions of the astral bodies by turning a crank that would
move the mechanism forward to any date in the future [Freeth, 2009].
Newton’s equations allowed scientists to capture this motion in a
mathematical formalism that was applicable not just to the astral bodies, but in
principle to any material object. It therefore was not such a big leap of the imagination
for Laplace, a century after Newton, to conceive of a demon that would be able to
observe the position and velocity of all material objects in the universe, and use this
information together with Newton’s laws to predict the future evolution of the
universe in every detail.
Laplace’s demon constitutes an immensely influential thought experiment. It
led both to a general philosophy of determinism and to the disappearance of God from
the scientific worldview (Laplace is famously quoted as observing that he had “no
need for this hypothesis”). Indeed, if the laws of motion together with the present state
of the universe completely specify any future (as well as past) states, then there is no
possibility for God, human or animal to intervene in the course of things, and all
events, future or past, are already determined. What appears to be evolution or change
is merely the translation of material objects along pre-existing trajectories determined
by the laws of motion [Heylighen, 1990]. Time then is nothing more than a coordinate
used to label the successive positions along those fixed trajectories—playing a role
similar to the position of the crank in the Antikythera clockwork.
Since everything is a priori determined, all notions of uncertainty, freedom,
surprise, novelty, creativity, and evolution become pointless. The same happens to all
notions that imply will, intention, goal-directedness, purpose or meaning: since it is
anyway already determined beforehand whether you will reach a particular goal or
not, it becomes pointless to reason in terms of striving, trying, or achieving. The
notion of goal or purpose in particular makes no sense in the Newtonian worldview:
since effects are already fully determined by their (past) cause, there is no room for
any (future) goal state to influence what happens here and now. This leads to the
often-heard criticism that science paints a bleak, mechanistic picture of life, which
leaves no space for meaning, values or ethics. Unfortunately, that criticism is often
misinterpreted to imply that we need to go back to some supernatural, mystical or
religious explanations.