Chapter 13 – The Morally Crucial Features of Modern Physics

At last. We are ready to tackle the moral challenge. The question now is: What are the characteristics of the real universe, according to our best scientific understanding of it, that determine how we should design our new moral code? The answer is: The two most morally crucial characteristics of the modern scientific worldview are quantum uncertainty and entropy. Each of these needs a bit more elaboration in order for us to see, first, how it affects human lives materially and, second, what its significance is morally.

The first morally relevant feature of reality is quantum uncertainty. It requires that humans, individually and in society, survive by learning to calculate probabilities of future events. These probabilities range from the likelihood that it may rain this afternoon, to the likelihood that I’ll get a stomach ache if I eat these fried onions, to the likelihood that a leopard is hiding in that field of grass ahead, to the likelihood that a war will come if we forbid the tribe that regularly crosses our rope bridge from using it anymore, to the likelihood that Germany will attack Russia given Hitler’s words in Mein Kampf asserting Germany’s need for living space to the east. We live by odds-making.

The second morally relevant feature of reality is stated by the second law of thermodynamics, and it is more familiar to us and far easier to explain than quantum uncertainty. The first law of thermodynamics says that energy, with matter viewed as just a concentrated form of energy, can’t be created or destroyed. It can only be changed in form, as in from chemical energy in gas, to heat energy in a motor, to mechanical energy in the motions of the pistons, the crankshaft and so on. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that, while the amount of energy in the universe remains constant, that energy always flows downward, from areas of greater concentration to areas of lesser concentration. If matter and energy become more concentrated or organized in one area of space, that means only that an even greater amount energy has flowed in from areas nearby. Everything is burning out, including us. Metals corrode, wood and fabric rot, and people and animals die. Even the stars and our sun are burning out.  In ordinary experience, this law means that life is always hard.

An area of matter-energy concentration (e.g., the biosphere of our planet or the mass of my body) must always be maintained at the expense of even greater rates of energy dissipation in nearby spaces. I get energy by eating plants or animals which also ultimately depend on eating plants. Plants get their energy from the sun as it burns. When fossil fuels are burned, they are also simply releasing stored solar energy, as are hydroelectric dams and firewood. The sun is our source; it burns and dissipates energy much more intensely than the creatures in the biosphere of the earth build up and store second-hand solar energy.

  
                          Dying star at the edge of the universe, thirteen billion light years away

Stars are burning out. The universe is heading toward a final state in which more than 10⁷⁹ instances of some kinds of elementary particles will be spread uniformly across it at a temperature of absolute zero. We really don’t understand numbers that big, but that doesn’t matter. The heat death of the universe, as far as our science can tell, is inevitable. (It isn’t due for at least another five billion years.) But the effect of the second law of thermodynamics is seen every day in the way things keep falling apart; rust and decay are built into the fabric of daily life.

To humans, who are complex, energy-concentrated, subtly organized, living entities, this means that like all living things we exist against the natural flow of the physical universe. The level of disorganization or “burnt-outness” of any object or area of space (including the universe) is called its entropy, and the overall entropy of the universe is always increasing.

Thus, our present world view, along with what it is telling us of entropy and quantum mechanics, is much more generally telling us, in terms relevant to human experience, that the universe is governed by what we recognize as two main principles: adversity and uncertainty. The sense we have that adversity is inherent in life is our most profound way of characterizing the entropy of reality. The sense we have that uncertainty is inherent in life is our most profound way of characterizing the quantum nature of reality.

Over thousands of years and billions of people, values enable the survival of a human society only if they complement the forces underlying physical reality, or, to be more precise, successful values must cause humans to behave in ways that complement and accommodate the physical forces that underlie reality, usually for the individual in the short term, but especially for the whole society over the long term. The successful values, riding in their human carriers, can thus go on.

Our values in modern democracies have been fairly effective at guiding us to survive and spread, though admittedly not always in humane ways. Over milennia, the demands of survival in a hazardous reality have caused us to work out a set of values, morés, and behavior patterns that is (mostly) consistent with the forces of reality. If we and our forebears had not learned and implemented our lessons at least moderately well, we would not be here. Having children is hereditary: if your parents didn’t have any, you won’t have any.

   
                                            American children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance

 


  
                                                     Chinese children saluting their flag

 
                                                      Children saluting the flag in Belarus

  
                                                Boys waving flags of United Arab Emirates 




                                                    Boys waving flags in Nigeria 

But we don’t yet comprehend the biggest of these truths in a conscious and self-aware way. Most people of every nationality still see their values as being exempt from analysis because via early childhood imprinting we have been programmed to be deeply, unswervingly loyal to those values. This style of programming has made the vast majority of people in most societies, both historical and modern, into unwitting pawns in their society’s way of life. A major purpose of this book is to help thoughtful readers become consciously aware of values and turn them into concepts that are available for analysis and discussion.