It
might seem that Plato, one of the history’s greatest philosophers, has little
or no relation to today’s science, but Plato’s ideas actually underpin the
foundations of science and our understanding of the world. In particular, Plato’s
forms are present in mathematics and physics, and without these eternal forms,
science wouldn’t be possible. So without further to do, let’s look at a quote from
a book I’ve recently finished reading:
From
The Eternal Law by John H. Spencer
(2015):
“Platonism is implied by physics,
but, more significantly, I am arguing that Platonism is presupposed by physics and that physics is only possible because Platonic realism is true.”
Many
pioneering scientists in the early 20th century, notably Planck,
Pauli, Bohr, Heisenberg, Einstein, and Schrodinger, were also aware of the
importance of metaphysics and realism in fundamental science. For example,
Schrodinger said that, “a real
elimination of metaphysics means taking the soul out of both art and science, turning them into skeletons incapable of any
further development.” So this isn’t anything new, but it’s worthwhile to
look at in detail because many physicists overlook the philosophy behind their
theories.
If
I were to summarize Spencer’s book in one argument, it would go something like
this:
1)
The
universe is not chaotic, but rather, follows certain laws.
2)
If
the laws underlying the universe are real, they must be nonphysical.
Conclusion 1:
Materialism, the idea that everything is just matter (and energy), is false.
3)
The
universe must exist objectively if these laws exist.
Conclusion 2: If the universe has an objective
existence, realism is true.
4)
Realism
is a form of Platonism.
Conclusion 3:
Therefore, Platonism is true.
Let’s look at this in more depth. First of all, I think it’s clear that there is at least some order in the universe. From the universe at large with galaxies shaped by gravity, to life on Earth with its complicated structures and processes, to the particles out of which everything is formed, there is order and structure. If everything was indeed chaotic, ungoverned by laws, we would be unable to predict anything. All the order we perceive would then be a great coincidence, indeed, a 13.8 billion year old coincidence (the age of the universe). We can’t prove that the universe isn’t chaotic, but it’s much more reasonable to suppose that it is instead governed by certain laws. That’s not to say that we know what the ultimate laws are, but it’s enough to say that they are “real.”
This
isn’t to say that “chaos theory” is wrong: chaos theory doesn’t saying that certain
processes are actually random, but that some systems are so sensitive to
initial conditions (such as the initial speed or height of an object before it’s
released) that it’s impossible (or nearly impossible) for us to predict the
outcome. In order to do so, we would have to know the initial conditions to a
high degree of precision that is currently impossible. But that’s not to say
that it’s behaving chaotically: it’s just that at our level of understanding,
we can’t predict it, so it appears “random.”
This
means that there must be things which are nonphysical. Why? Well, if physical
laws and mathematics are real, then they must be nonphysical simply because you
can’t go out and find the number “2” or “E = mc2” floating about in
the physical world. We see instances
of the number 2 (2 dogs, 2 books, etc.) and instances of E = mc2 (the
energy of a certain mass can be found by this equation, and vice versa), but
never the number or equation itself. And if something isn’t physical, it is
therefore nonphysical (obviously). Spencer also says that “realism entails that materialism is false, because we have to admit
that something can be real and yet not be physical.”
Another
way to see this is that since the equations of physics are used to describe
certain physical things, they can’t be physical things themselves or else they
would be subject to change. Everything physical changes, and these changes are
described by certain complicated laws. But the laws themselves don’t change, or
else they could not accurately predict anything, and to be unchanging,
something must be nonphysical. But this is just an additional way to see it: I
think the idea we can never perceive a number “2” out there, or even in a
certain bit of energy that somehow represents that number, is clear enough.
Next,
the idea that the world must exist objectively
(independent of us and our conceptions of it) naturally follows from this
because if the laws are real, then they can’t just exist in our mind. If they
did, they would be subjective and so dependent on our minds and perceptions,
which is not at all what we observe (by the way, I’m using “universe” and
“world” interchangeably). Of course, we have some subjective influence on the
world, but that’s not to say that we can change anything. But the idea is that even if the world itself is not
entirely objective, the laws of physics and mathematics must be, because,
having just argued that they are real, they have to exist independently of what
they describe. And, since they are not dependent on us (we are also what they
describe), they must be objective.
There
is, however, a lot of subjectivity in our perceptions of the world. There’s
obviously the fact that our biases and personal opinions affect our
perceptions, but additionally, we have a limited perception of the world due to
our senses. We have five senses that operate in a narrow range (for example, we
can only see visible light, which is a small portion of the whole electromagnetic
spectrum), and if we had other senses, the world would appear to be a very
different place. But none of this is to say that there is no “thing in itself”
behind the world we perceive. We only know a small portion of it, but we are
sensing “something” out there, namely, our perceptions of the objective world. We
can certainly affect it, either physically or with our minds, but even our
minds operate according to certain laws. So even if you believe that your mind
shapes reality, that’s not to say that it does so completely randomly. What
your mind is shaping is your perceptions of reality and how you interact with
it, not the thing in itself. However, there are some things that can be said to
be “more real” than others, but this is where Platonism comes in, which we’ll
come to later.
Anti-realists
claim that we invent truth, that the laws of physics are fictions we create to
describe the world and don’t exist in any fundamental sense. But unless the
world is chaotic and not governable by laws (though how these laws came to be is another matter entirely) then they
must exist independently from us. And if this is the case, we are lead to
realism at once, because if the world is governable by certain laws, even if we
can’t discover what they are with the knowledge we have (now or even ever), they
still can be known in principle. Now,
this isn’t to say that the laws of physics that we currently use are the right
ones: the laws we have most likely approximate the actual laws, but the fact that
they are not perfect is due to our own limitations, not because they don’t
actually exist.
Now,
we can go one step further by looking at Plato’s philosophy. Plato’s analogy of
the cave quite nicely sums it up (see my previous blog post),
but generally, in Plato’s philosophy about the universe, there is a hierarchy
of reality with the Good, the eternal, nonphysical principle from which all
things arose, at the highest level beyond being and existence. The Good can
also be called God, the Tao, Emptiness, etc. Plato’s forms are just below the Good
in the hierarchy of existence, and they are unchanging principles that
eventually gives rise to the physical world. So in the hierarchy of reality, we
go from simple and eternal to complex and changing. The higher forms are principles
such as Beauty, Truth, Number, and Symmetry, and those lower down, which
partake in various higher forms, are things such as equations, morality, and
even objects such as the form of a tree, or of a person, etc. All trees, people,
and so on “partake” in the forms, as if they were partial reflections of them.
Things
in the physical world can never be perfect renditions of the forms above
because they are always changing, and so never last eternally. If something was
perfect, and remained perfect, it could never change, because if it did, it
would no longer be perfect. This is why things that exist nonphysically can be
said to be “perfect” since they never change, but things in the physical world can
never be perfect even in principle.
Now, to say that some discipline is a kind of Platonism, whether it is ethics, theology, mathematics, or psychology, means that there is a hierarchy of laws or of reality. The principles we use in, say, ethics, would then be derivable from more fundamental principles that are simpler and apply to a wider range of phenomena. Likewise with mathematics and physics: physics must be Platonic because otherwise, the laws of physics are just fictions that do not correspond to reality. Though even if physics and mathematics only make sense in a Platonist framework, it is not necessarily true of other areas (politics, etc.).
So
the laws of physics can all essentially be derived from more fundamental laws,
and if you trace this back up the chain, you arrive at the primary law, what is
called the Eternal Law in the book. So “All
the laws of physics are partial reflections of the one eternal mathematical
law, which is a kind of super-law, the foundation of all the mathematical laws
in the universe.” This is the simplest law, existing in the nonphysical
world of forms, though it is not the most fundamental form (symmetry, number,
and of course, the Good, are above it). This law dictates how things work in
the physical world, all the matter and energy within it, and although we
probably wouldn’t be able to comprehend it in itself, the more specific laws we
to describe the world are derived from it.
We
would do well to better appreciate Plato’s philosophy in physics, for, although
Platonic ideas have been prevalent in science in the past, many physicists and
philosophers today reject these ideas. However, some notable physicists
recognize the necessity for realism and Platonism, for example, the author of
the book I’ve been quoting from, who is a quantum physicist, and the physicist
Sir Roger Penrose to name a few. Penrose said that, “The more deeply we probe Nature’s secrets, the more profoundly we are
driven into Plato’s world of mathematical ideals as we seek our understanding.”
And
so, as the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Plato is philosophy, and
philosophy, Plato,” and to this, we ought to add that, at least at the very
fundamental level, “Plato is physics, and physics, Plato.”
Click here for more posts in my Quotes of Wisdom series.
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