Quantum Living - Part Two - Newtonian thinking

THE EVOLUTION OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT

Who gives a Fig for Newton?

We have proceeded down the road of Scientific discovery for the past 100 years, using a paradigm which, rightly or otherwise, has been associated with Sir Isaac Newton. Newton likely inherited this paradigm, but expressed it so well and forcefully that it became his legacy to 20th Century humanity.

The essence of this world-view is that the world operates according to determinism, there being clearly expressable laws which govern all material interaction. It is a physical world-view, which treats energy as one of the properties of matter.

The implication of the deterministic viewpoint is that we inhabit a 'clockwork' sort of universe, which got it's start at some time long past (presumably the role of the Creator is there) but which now unfolds according to law which, once discovered, permits us to mathematically predict outcomes, given enough data, and enough calculation power.

The gap between humanity and God in the Newtonian universe is essentially one of mental grasp - our small brain being insufficient, even with help, to calculate all of the effects which lie downstream of the cause we happen to be currently considering.

Newton had enormous credibility, having invented Calculus independently of Leibniz in Germany, and having discovered the laws of gravitation and expressed them mathematically - what could be a greater achievement than that? His expression of the model of reality as a mathematically precise machine was accepted as the model for a hundred years of material progress - and who, after all, could argue with progress? As leader of the British Royal Society during its heyday, he led the march of modern discovery into a new day.

The steam age was founded on Newton's mechanical mode of thought; and with it the development of modern mining, rail transport, extending through to roads and the modern automobile and truck. The mechanical complexity of the modern age can be traced back to Newton.

Newton and his counterparts founded the age of manufacturing and construction; factories, buildings, bridges and tunnels. Newtonian mathematics and physics underlies the world of mechanical and civil engineering, and many of the dehumanizing aspects that go with it. These include assembly lines and factory pollution, but also something more subtle - the building of things on a scale that dwarfs the individual. We have concrete jungles in our cities, we eat food that is transported halfway round the world, and the pace of industrial civilization intrudes upon the ease of living.