Yet all the signs indicate that if we don’t define our moral values in a way that makes sense to us as modern thinkers, aware of Science and its method, and we continue to cling to our old value systems—the inconsistent, hypocritical codes that developed in the Roman world, the Medieval world, and the Enlightenment – codes that let us march over other nations and even nature herself—then we are going to destroy our world.

But there is hope. We have a new world view. The question is, can we derive from it a new code of values, one that is consistent with Science and, thus, makes sense to us in these times? Let’s see what we can do with the worldview of the New Physics.

Quantum theory is the most complete model we have of reality. It correctly predicts all our observations of the real world, some of which had stymied scientists for generations. But the worldview quantum theory offers is a strange one, especially to Western thinking.

In the world today, only a very few can do the math involved in quantum theory, but its most fundamental principle is easy to state: reality is flux. However, grasping what those words mean is more difficult. To say that everything is in constant flux is inadequate. Rather, we must say that change is reality. For example, the things we see, with their surfaces, masses and colours, are illusions. According to quantum physicists, an object is only an area in space-time where waves in electro-magnetic and gravitational fields cause impressions of solidness, weight, shape, texture and colors to our senses and so in our brains.²

But according to quantum theory, these things I think I’m seeing are temporary. If they are given enough time, they will collapse. Exactly how any one object or particle will collapse and what it will become next we cannot ever say with certainty. We can make predictions, some with very high degrees of probability (I’m pretty sure my laptop computer is not going to vanish from under my hands anytime soon), but we cannot “pre-know” any event with certainty no matter how clever or well-supplied with data we are. Cause and effect don’t always connect. Odd things, external and internal, sometimes interfere.

                                     

   

                                           Artist’s conception of a giant meteor hitting Earth 

                                                (credit: Don Davis, via Wikimedia Commons)

I can’t know when I try to stretch out my arm that my arm will stretch out. One day it may not. When that day will come, I can’t say. I can’t know whether the sun will rise tomorrow or whether the pen I bumped off of my desk will fall to the floor. A giant meteor may strike the earth. My pen may get caught in a kind of antigravity field that, until today, I knew nothing about. My pen could conceivably hover two feet from my face or soar out of my window. 

I can’t know anything for certain, ever, period. I can only calculate the probabilities that I will experience some familiar events and objects. I base my estimates of these probabilities on my memories of past experiences, on generalizations formed by studying those memories, and on beliefs and habits acquired from my culture. My estimates are accurate most of the time. But I can’t know anything for certain.

In the terms of everyday human experience, “reality is flux” means that change one can plan for is not real change. There is only one rule, which is the rule that says that there are no rules, or at least not any hard and fast ones. Or, as the old saying has it, life is full of rude awakenings.

                             

                             Rude Awakening    (credit: Harrison Weir, via Wikimedia Commons)