Introduction
Since the beginnings of western science, with the investigations of the ancient Greeks roughly 2,500 years ago, what we tend to think of as primarily scientific issues and primarily philosophical issues have had strong influences on one another.
To take just one example, certain broadly philosophical views on the sort of universe we inhabit have tended to be informed by the fundamental sciences of the time. So in the western world for much of the period from the ancient Greeks to the 1600s, the universe was broadly conceived of as a teleological universe, that is, a universe with natural goals and functions. And the universe was viewed as roughly analogous to an organism. In the same way, say, that the parts of an organism act as they do to fulfill goals (to pump blood, to digest food, and so on), so too natural objects behaved as they did because of natural, goal-directed tendencies. And this teleological view of the universe reflected the teleology of the sciences of the time.With the scientific changes in the 1600s, and the increasingly mechanistic approach (that is, a non goal-directed approach) of fundamental sciences such as Newtonian physics, the general conception of the universe changed to a more mechanistic universe. No longer was the universe thought to be analogous to an organism; rather, the prevailing view came to be that the universe was viewed as like a machine, sort of a clock-like universe. And again, this mechanistic view of the universe reflected the mechanistic tendencies of the fundamental sciences of the time.
In general, our broadly philosophical views on what sort of universe we inhabit has tended to be informed, as it should be, by our current best science. And notably, two of the key developments in twentieth-century science turn out to have surprising implications for the philosophical question as to the sort of universe we inhabit.
Early in the twentieth century, two important new theories arose in physics. The first of these was Einstein’s theory of relativity, and the second was quantum theory. As suggested, both of these new theories have non-trivial consequences for certain deeply held beliefs about the sort of universe we inhabit, and one of the main goals of this essay will be to develop some of the philosophical implications of these theories. In what follows, we will begin by looking at relativity theory, with an eye toward understanding some of the key implications of this theory, and then turn to quantum theory and some of its implications.
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