Book Chapters – Page 4 – Religion Online
Big Accident Cosmologists grant the objective existence of space/time/mass/ energy; but, they contend, it all adds up to nothing. All opposing forces within our closed universe balance out perfectly; and the net result is zero. If a perfectly balanced universe is closed, the net energy in that universe is nil. As Alan Guth puts it, "The Universe is the ultimate free lunch."1 According to the "free lunch" interpretation of quantum physics, our universe is a delicate but accidental balance of negative and positive forces that sums up to nothing. This perfect balance is called "perfect symmetry."

1. The Universe as a Big Accident

If symmetry is perfect on a cosmic scale, the total amount of energy in the universe is actually zero. Does this mean that nothing caused the universe? If our universe is an absolute zero, absolutely nothing seems required to cause it! Is our universe such an ultimate absolute accident? Is it a nothing that is caused by nothing for no reason or purpose at all? Extreme Big Accident Cosmology answers affirmatively. This cosmology is advocated by Quantum Cosmologists like Edward P. Tryon,2 Peter Atkins,3 A. Vilenkin,4 Victor J. Stenger,5 Quentin Smith,6 and a few others7 for whom the origin of our universe was indeed a stupendous accident, having no cause whatsoever.

Cosmologists who take this final step are not Antecedent Universe Cosmologists because they acknowledge no antecedents at all, no oscillating predecessors, not even Mother Spacetime and the unstable energy situation of the physical vacuum, not even really empty space itself. They view our world as an absolute accident, requiring neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for its existence. They believe that our universe was created not only from nothing but by nothing. As Edward P. Tryon put it, "Our universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time."8 Tryon was only a forerunner of Big Accident Cosmology who suggested that our universe may be produced by a quantum fluctuation of "the vacuum of some larger space in which our Universe is imbedded,"9 so he actually presupposed the pre-existence of something after all. Renunciation of all antecedent conditions by real Accidentalists like Peter Atkins and Victor J. Stenger is much more complete. As Atkins expressed it,

In the beginning was nothing. Absolute void, not merely empty space. There was no space; nor was there time, for this was before time. The Universe was without form and void.

By chance was a fluctuation, and a set of points, emerging from nothing and taking their existence from the pattern they formed, defined a time.

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The chance formation of a pattern resulted in the emergence of time from coalesced opposites, its emergence from nothing. From absolutely nothing, absolutely without intervention, there came into being rudimentary existence.10

And as Stenger put it,

I picture the origin of the universe as follows: in the beginning there was a void more empty than a perfect vacuum, empty not only of particles and fields but of space and time as well. It had perfect symmetry and zero energy. It was as much nothing as nothing can be. A fluctuation in that void then occurred, generating our universe and perhaps countless others very different from ours.11

Quentin Smith, another Big Accident Cosmologist, rejects Tryon's "vacuum fluctuation in empty space" account of the origin of the universe,12 along with the principle of universal causation. He affirms that "The most reasonable belief is that we came from nothing, by nothing, and for nothing."13 That is Big Accident Cosmology in a nutshell!

Extreme quantum Big Accident Cosmology proposes that the creation of our universe is the ultimate chance happening, a totally spontaneous quantum fluctuation in, from, of, and by pure nothingness. How plausible is the view that nothing caused the Big Bang?

2. Critique of Big Accident Quantum Cosmology

The fundamental affirmations and presuppositions of Big Accident quantum cosmology are empirically vacuous and should be dismissed as utterly meaningless by empiricist standards. "Absolutely nothing caused the Big Bang" presupposes that "Absolutely nothing once existed," but no conceivable experience could ever directly verify this affirmation. Any confirming or disconfirming experience would exist and would thus falsify the claim. No examples of absolute non-existence, or of causation by non-existence, could ever be given directly in any conceivable experience. Also, we cannot reason inductively about such things since we have no instances with which to start.

Aside from being utterly unintelligible experientially and inductively, Big Accident quantum cosmology is troubled by three extreme affirmations that make it utterly implausible as an explanatory hypothesis. Big Accident theorists are committed to the preposterous claims that: A. The universe exists in such perfect symmetry that its net energy equals zero. B. Natural quantum laws exist and function in a state of absolute nothingness. C. Causality must be totally abandoned at the point of ultimate origins. But why are these claims so preposterous?

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A. Perfect Symmetry and Zero Energy

Our universe was created out of nothing by nothing, for nothing, and is nothing, according to extreme Big Accident quantum cosmologists. All the forces operating in the universe exist in such perfect balance or symmetry that the net energy of the universe is absolutely zero. Supposedly, the kinetic energy of the initial explosion is perfectly balanced by the counter-tug of gravity; positive and negative electrical charges of material particles all ultimately cancel one another out, as do matter and antimatter. Everything in the universe is so arranged that absolutely everything adds up to absolutely nothing.

Victor J. Stenger explicitly links zero energy with creation by nothing, arguing that "Since the universe has zero total energy, no energy was required in its production."14 This extreme "caused by nothing" hypothesis would be false, however, if the universe contains the slightest bit of positive energy, if symmetry is in any way imperfect. Does the empirical evidence support perfect symmetry? The average density of all positive and negative electrical charges may be zero, but assuredly we have not totaled them all. Even so, at least three important facts about our world count heavily against the theory that all manifestations of energy are so equally balanced that they sum up to zero: i. We live in an open universe; ii. Matter decisively triumphs over antimatter; and iii. The kinetic energy of the initial bang is more powerful than gravity.

i. We Live in an Open Universe

First, only a closed universe can have zero energy, but overwhelming evidence, given in Chapter Three, indicates that our universe is open. Andrei Linde refers to "The well-known fact that the total energy of a closed Universe is zero, being a sum of the positive energy of matter and the negative energy of the scale factor a."15 But Linde's "well-known fact" is not really a fact about our universe. Free-lunchers do a lot of wishful thinking! At this stage in the development of science, the most reasonable view is that our universe is open. Entities involved in the Hubble expansion have enough escape velocity to keep expanding forever; the Hubble rate of cosmic expansion is increasing, not decreasing; and gravitational and kinetic energy are decisively out of balance. After all identifiable dark matter is counted, seventy to ninety percent of the mass/energy required to close the universe is missing. Recall earlier discussions of the claim that sufficient mass exists to counterbalance the expansion of the universe. The missing mass just isn't there. Many prominent scientific cosmologists believe that the universe is open and will expand forever, precisely because not enough matter or mass exists to close it, balance it, or even slow it down.16 Some cold dark matter exists; but prospects are dim that sufficient missing mass will ever be located to close down the expansion of the universe.17 This is especially obvious now that we

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know that the rate of Hubble expansion is increasing, not decreasing. Oddly, in his most recent book, Victor J. Stenger insists that we live in an open universe, one lacking enough mass to close it;18 but he inconsistently affirms that enough invisible dark matter exists to balance exactly the kinetic and rest energies of the mass of the universe.19 Stenger concedes, significantly, that what he means by "zero energy" actually contains a small positive amount of energy!20 So, where did that tiny bit come from? Stenger offers no answer.

If enough mass/energy exists to register at .99999 instead of a measly .1 to .3 of Omega at 1, the universe would still be open. Exactly at Omega, expansion would proceed very slowly forever; but the universe would never contract; a spent world would endure forever. Omega plus an additional scrap of mass/ energy is required for reversal. In the extremely unlikely event that our measurements might some day approximate these near-closure figures, margins of error would always prevent us from knowing for sure that the universe is closed. Without sufficient mass/energy, gravity loses; kinetic energy wins; and the average net results are greater than zero. Victor J. Stenger claimed in his 1988 book that the universe is balanced between open and closed;21 yet, an impressive seventy to ninety percent of the evidence cannot be found. Stenger concedes this in his 1995 book where he announces that the universe is open,22 but he does not acknowledge that only a closed universe could be a Big Accident. Believing in a closed universe, or even a delicately balanced one, is too much like believing in Santa Claus and Ptolemaic epicycles. Abdus Salam concedes that "At the present time, measurements do not appear to sustain" the claim that "the mass of the universe adds up to zero;" and without this, "We shall discard the whole notion of the universe arising as a quantum fluctuation."23 Yes indeed!

ii. Matter Prevails over Antimatter

Second, our material universe exists precisely because matter and antimatter do not exist in perfect symmetry. We live in a material world because matter triumphed over antimatter near the very beginning, or because our universe was created from the outset with a massive imbalance of matter over antimatter. Stenger defends a hidden symmetry of matter and antimatter, despite the complete absence of evidence for it and substantial evidence against it. His only evidence is the non-empirical Principle of Plenitude. All possible states are actual, he insists. Symmetry is broken and matter prevails in our domain, he concedes, but in other domains (other universes, presumably composed of antimatter) in infinite Superspacetime, things balance out.24 But how does he know that? We have no empirical access to any Superspacetime containing antimatter universes, much less an infinitude of it! And Superspacetime, if it exists, is not sheer nothingness.

We do not know that any, much less that all, possibilities are actualized in other domains or universes somewhere in Superspacetime. This a priori meta

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physics cannot be verified or falsified. Empirically, the claim is utterly meaningless, permanently without experiential content for us. An implausible hypothesis-creation of, by, out of, and for absolutely nothing-cannot be defended successfully by appeal to theories that are utterly senseless. In this world, the only one that we know to exist, mass/energy is definitely not zero. As A. Zee wrote in 1986,

Ever since Dirac's ideas about antimatter were experimentally confirmed, people have speculated that the Universe has an equal amount of matter and antimatter, segregated into domains. More precisely, it was asserted that all conserved quantum numbers of the Universe should be zero. In particular, since electric charge Q is known to be zero to a high degree of accuracy, it seems "aesthetically appealing" that baryon number B and lepton number L should also be zero. Unfortunately, the weight of the observational evidence is against this supposition. 25

After thoroughly reviewing the empirical evidence, Gary Steigman concluded as early as 1979 that "The Universe is not symmetric and contains little, if any, antimatter."26 In 1991, John D. Barrow concurred:

Although particle accelerators produce matter and antimatter in equal abundances quite routinely and there is a democratic relationship between the two, we see no antiplanets, no antistars, no antigalaxies, and there is no evidence of any antimatter in the cosmic rays that come from outside our solar system. Nor do we see any evidence of the wholesale annihilation of matter and antimatter, which would erupt anywhere in the Universe, where the two came into contact. Thus, for some mysterious reason, there exists a form of cosmic favoritism.27

In 1993, after describing his research team's extensive probing during the 1970s for antimatter particles with sensitive instruments carried by high altitude balloons, George Smoot wrote that "During all the years, we found not a single convincing sign of cosmic antimatter. 28

Perhaps, however, a perfect symmetry of matter and antimatter existed "in the beginning," even though little or no antimatter exists today. As Heinz R. Pagels suggests, "The present matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe does not reflect the original state of the primal fireball, which could have perfect symmetry."29 Even so, free-lunchers must explain how the original perfect symmetry of matter was broken and overcome, how enough matter to comprise our universe survived an initial perfect balance of matter and antimatter, why so little antimatter survived, and how this all adds up to nothing. A widely accepted explanation is that a surplus of matter over antimatter resulted because the earliest physical particles decayed at an irregular pace, as

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permitted by the weak force.30 This answer is very problematic. Why did the weak force permit asymmetrical decay into matter instead of antimatter? Why didn't the weak force exemplify perfect symmetry? Emerging from perfect symmetry, why were these primitive particles asymmetrically inclined? Why weren't they all annihilated by their own perfectly symmetrical antiparticles? This widely accepted explanation pushes the asymmetry back one step but does not account for it. No one has ever observed the primitive particles that supposedly decayed into a surplus of matter; they are purely hypothetical explanatory constructs with no empirical status whatsoever. Most seriously, if symmetry was so perfect originally, all of the original primitive particles should have been annihilated by their own primitive anti-particles. The conventional explanation of why asymmetry exists in a perfectly symmetrical universe is unverified, incoherent, and unintelligible.

In 1998, A. G. Cohen, A. De RuJula, and S. L. Glashow indicated that primordial matter/antimatter symmetry would elevate the gamma ray background and distort the cosmic microwave background far above observable quantities. They argue that although small pockets of antimatter might exist here and there, empirical evidence excludes a patchwork universe composed of widely separated regions of matter and antimatter. After reviewing the evidence, they conclude that "A matter-antimatter symmetric universe is empirically excluded. "31

Even if equal quantities of matter and antimatter existed originally, this would still not prove zero net energy for the universe as a whole. When material and antimaterial particles collide and explode, they do not leave behind zero energy or absolute nothingness, as the "free lunch" Big Accident theory predicts and requires. Instead, they leave a residue of gamma radiation, which is a definite and positive form of mass/energy. 32 In fact, residues of primordial gamma radiation may now have been found; 33 but the early mutual extinction of matter and antimatter did not result in zero mass/energy. Clearly, the primordial annihilation was asymmetrical, a fact that perfect symmetry cannot explain.

iii. The Bang Overpowers Gravity

Before concluding that the universe is really not a free lunch after all, let us consider another argument for this conclusion. If matter/antimatter symmetry does not add up to zero, perhaps matter-gravity symmetry does. In explaining Stephen Hawking's commitment to the zero-energy free lunch theory, Michael White and John Gribbin declare that "If all the matter in the Universe could be collected together at a single point, its negative gravitational energy (- mc2) would exactly cancel out all the positive mass energy ( + mc2) of all the matter."34 This argument for a zero energy universe completely ignores the stupendous kinetic energy of the Big Bang itself, against which gravity is fighting a losing battle. It was written before we discovered that the rate of

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Hubble expansion is increasing. It assumes incorrectly, as Hawking does (at times), that the universe contains enough mass/energy to close it. Surprisingly, Hawking himself says in his 1988 A Brief History of Time that "The present evidence suggests that the universe will probably expand forever";35 but his no boundary model of the universe as a globe that begins at the North Pole, expands to the Equator, then shrinks to the South Pole, implies that the universe will not expand forever because an open universe that expands forever would have no South Pole. Which is the real Hawking?

In Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time: A Reader's Companion, published in 1992, Hawking says, "I predict that the universe in time will come to an end at the big crunch. "36 In his 1993 book, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, Hawking defends both the openness and the closedness of the universe and concludes that he is hedging his bets "by predicting both ways. "37 He concedes that observation discloses only ten percent of the mass required for closing the universe.38 His argument for a closed universe is purely conjectural, theoretical, and a priori.

Peter Coles and George Ellis wrote in 1994 that "The primary reasons for the widespread belief in a critical density of matter are theoretical." They emphasize that

this is indeed an experimental question, where theory-no matter how dear it may be to us-will eventually have to bow to the experimental evidence. It may be that the theoretical prejudice in favor of the high-density models will one day be confirmed; if so that will be a great triumph for theory. However, at present the weight of evidence if anything favors a lowdensity universe. 39

After examining both theoretical and empirical evidence for a closed universe, Coles and Ellis affirm that "The amount of dark matter for which there is compelling direct evidence is a long way short of closing the Universe, "40 and that "No strongly convincing case can be made for a critical-density Universe, and on the balance of the evidence, an open Universe should be preferred." They conclude that "Those cosmologists who take it for granted that we live in a high-density Universe and there seem to be many may turn out to be profoundly mistaken."41 Consider also this argument against critical density symmetry. If ours is a critical density closed universe, it must be no older than eight billion years, some astrophysicists indicate. Yet, many galactic structures in the visible universe are older than an eight billion-year-old universe itself! Thus, if criticaldensity cosmologists are right, they must be wrong! Only an open universe allows enough time to account for the age of all its structures.42 Trusting experience, the most reasonable thing to believe, though not absolutely certain, is that we live in an open universe. For the net energy of the

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universe to equal zero, all forms of energy, not just a few, must cancel out, including the cosmic contests between matter and antimatter and between gravity and the residual kinetic energy of the Big Bang. They do not balance out. The universe is really something after all! Perhaps it also has a real cause, more than zero existence, and a real purpose!

B. Quantum Natural Laws Operating in Nothingness

Without realizing or admitting it, Big Accident Cosmologists actually presuppose the existence of something when they imagine the creation of the universe out of and by absolutely nothing. They presuppose the existence of definite laws of nature, specifically those of quantum mechanics, operating on absolutely nothing in a state of absolute nothingness. Our Big Bang and the resulting universe were created, they claim, by quantum fluctuations within nothingness in accord with the laws of quantum physics. According to Stephen Hawking, "It is possible in the quantum theory for the ordinary laws of science to hold everywhere, including at the beginning oftime."43 Quentin Smith concedes that the Godless quantum cosmology to which he subscribes,

represents the universe as beginning about 15 billion years ago in accordance with a physical law. The universe is described as beginning from nothing in accordance with some law. Here 'nothing' does not mean the quantum-mechanical vacuum (which it often means in quantum cosmologies, such as Tryon's), but literally nothing, i.e., the absence of all concrete objects (mass, energy, spacetime).44

Nothing existed. Yet quantum laws were there. So were quantum fluctuations allowed by these laws. Nothing to fluctuate existed, yet nothingness lawfully fluctuated! Quantum laws existed and produce spontaneous fluctuations within absolute nothingness, says Big Accident cosmology; and this supposedly accounts for the origin of our universe! 45 But none of this makes good sense, for something (laws and fluctuations) cannot exist in or as absolutely nothing; and no physical laws exist when no physical entities exist. The position is logically incoherent, and it confuses formal with efficient causes. It confuses laws with efficacious energy.

i. The Incoherence of Something in Nothing

Big Accident Quantum Cosmology cannot be formulated coherently. The difficulties are partly with the fluctuations, partly with the laws. Supposedly, fluctuations in nothingness make bubbles of nothingness that inflate into entire universes of nothingness, one of which is ours. But how can absolutely nothing fluctuate? What could be the difference in meaning or reference between

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"Nothing fluctuated" and "There were no fluctuations"? How could nothing fluctuate at all? How could it fluctuate lawfully? How could "Nothing fluctuated" explain the origin of the universe, especially when the fluctuations themselves were nothing? Recall that less extreme inflationary theorists derive our universe from the pre-existing "empty space" of Superspacetime, and that this "empty space" has its own physical density and mass/energy. Particles and antiparticles are spontaneously generated by unpredictable fluctuations in a primitive actualized energy field, and an occasional particle that escapes annihilation supposedly inflates into a full-fledged universe. Although primeval inflation within transcendent Superspacetime is very far removed from experience, the quantum-fizzy nature of empty spacetime within our system of nature is well established; and it is not pure nothingness.

As for quantum laws in absolute non-being, Heinz Pagels acknowledged the incoherence of the idea of"laws in nothingness." He wrote,

The nothingness "before" the creation of the universe is the most complete void that we can imagine-no space, time or matter existed. It is a world without place, without duration or eternity, without number-it is what the mathematicians call "the empty set." Yet this unthinkable void converts itself into the plenum of existence-a necessary consequence of physical laws. Where are these laws written into that void? What "tells" the void that it is pregnant with a possible universe? It would seem that even the void is subject to law, a logic that exists prior to space and time.46

If laws are there in nothingness, it is not pure nothingness!

ii. Laws Are Only Formal Causes

Most seriously, in contemporary natural science, physical laws merely describe the statistically average habituated behaviors of actual physical entities, and they change if and when these habits change. Laws are merely formal causes, not efficient causes imposing external limits on what natural entities can do. No abstract laws can exist when nothing else exists for them to describe. Where nothing exists in spacetime, there are no physical laws. No formal causes can operate when nothing has no form, where no habituated energy-laden actualities exist. The actualized energy field of"empty space" has a habitual case of jitters, and so do all the particles that emerge lawfully from it; but it is not sheer nothingness. Quantum laws are finitely probabilistic and predictive, but no finite predictive probabilities exist to be calculate in a state of absolute nothingness. Either primitive physical actualities with habits existed within Big Accident's alleged nothingness, or no quantum laws were there to permit or describe accidental probabilistic world-creating quantum fluctuations of energy-laden

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realities. If quantum laws and primitive physical actualities existed in primeval nothingness, it was not absolute nothingness. Additional important questions remain unanswered. Do the adduced preworld quantum laws and primitive physical actualities come from somewhere and thus depend on something else for their existence, or are they self-existent, eternal, and necessary beings? If so, by virtue of what do they have this metaphysical status? Why do the laws of quantum physics obtain in nothingness when so many other physical laws-like those of Newtonian mechanics, or of relativity physics alone-are logically possible? Who or what selects the relevant laws? How meaningful is the presumption that totally disembodied laws exist anywhere, much less in absolute nothingness? Big Accident Cosmology has no good answers. It is too much ado about nothingness!

C. Total Abandonment of Causation

Some cosmologists admit it, some do not; but the spontaneous creation of our universe occurred only because necessary causal conditions for its creation were met. In that sense, our universe definitely had a cause. Most Quantum Cosmologists are convinced that these necessary conditions include transcendent Mother Spacetime, the physical vacuum, the primordial fizz, an actualized primordial field of energy, and the laws of quantum mechanics.

Extreme Quantum Accidentalists repudiate all of this; they conjecture that our universe is an absolute accident that just popped into being out of pure nothingness devoid of all causal conditions whatsoever. An absolute accident has no causal conditions at all. Accidentalists deny both necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of our universe. As Stenger says, "The simplest hypothesis that so far seems to explain the data is that the universe is an accident. "47 What caused the Big Bang? "Nothing!" answers extreme Quantum Accidentalism.

If the Big Bang that created our world was an absolute accident requiring no causal conditions at all, it was the most stupendous accident that ever happened, the greatest miracle of all time, but without a Divine miracle worker. And to think that some people have trouble with God as a miracle worker! Big Accident Cosmologists insist that their creation-by-nothing scenario is all very plausible; but upon closer examination, we see that this is not so.

i. Necessary but Not Sufficient Causal Conditions

Paul Davies claimed in 1983 that quantum physics abandons causality completely and "permits events to occur without causes in the quantum world. "48 An element of truth is in this, but not the whole truth. Spontaneous fluctuations do occur in the quantum world; sufficient causal conditions for spontaneity do not exist. Nevertheless, quantum fluctuations always presuppose and require neces-

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sary causal conditions. Davies concedes as much: "Recent discoveries in particle physics have suggested mechanisms whereby matter can be created in empty space by the cosmic gravitational field, which only leaves the origin of spacetime itself as a mystery. "49 So both spacetime and a gravitational (or some kind of) energy field are necessary causal conditions for the creation of matter; but how can gravity exist without physical mass? Davies finally concluded that quantum gravity "would allow spacetime to be created and destroyed spontaneously and uncaused in the same way that particles are created and destroyed spontaneously and uncaused. "50 Still, this presupposes quantum gravity, not pure nothingness; but what would quantum gravity attract (or repel) in absolute nothingness? How could it operate in and on nothing? As Einstein insisted, no gravity exists without mass/energy and spacetime. One thing leads to another! Currently, gravity is best treated within classical relativity physics, which allows for definiteness and continuity in gravitational effects; but no workable theory of quantum gravity is available. 51 In addition to quantum laws, quantum gravity has its own necessary conditions like gravitational particles-as yet undiscovered gravitons and gravitinos that presently exist in theory only. It also requires mass and spacetime, for gravity is identical with spatiotemporal mass and curvature, according to relativity theory.

Also, in a quantum universe, gravitational particles should display their own quirky quantum effects-indefiniteness, discreteness, spontaneity, scattering, and so forth; but in well-established domains of particle physics, these quantum effects always presuppose their own conditions. When an adequate theory is developed, quantum gravity cannot and will not exclude necessary causal conditions. It will not abandon causation absolutely.

ii. Freedom Has Necessary Conditions

To turn to another problem, perhaps experience discloses occasional exceptions to the principle of universal causation-like human freedom; and maybe the origin of the universe falls under one of the exceptions. Freedom and creativity exemplify self-originated spontaneity. This means that things can and do happen without sufficient causes, but not that anything ever happens without necessary causes. This is clearly at odds with the suppositions of extreme Quantum Accidentalists. Contingent realities-things that might or might not be-never come into being when causal grounds, necessary causal conditions, are completely absent. A very decisive empirical consideration supports this: All experience illustrates it. Experience universally confirms that necessary conditions are required for the existence of every contingent entity that comes into being, everything whose non-existence is logically possible, including creativity and acts of free will.

An experienced-based philosophical perspective can make a place for freedom and spontaneity. Both at macroscopic human and microscopic quantum

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levels, creative freedom is incompatible only with sufficient but not with necessary causal conditions. Quantum theory does not dispense with necessary causal conditions, and neither does human freedom. All experience confirms that contingently existing things always have causes, including quantum effects and free choices. Spontaneous quantum fluctuations cannot and do not occur in the absence of necessary causal conditions like Mother Spacetime, or our spacetime, the physical vacuum, an actualized energy field, and quantum laws. Freely made human choices do not occur in the absence of necessary conditions like desires, interests, and some awareness of open possibilities. Without the presence of something, free choices cannot be made. So freedom is no exception to the rule that everything has a cause. Some causal conditions are necessary for the occurrence of everything that happens. Quantum physics and human freedom presuppose only that things can happen in the absence of totally sufficient causal conditions.

iii. Applying Causation to World-Origins

"Everything that comes into being has a cause" was often defended by rationalistic philosophers like Descartes and Jonathan Edwards as an intuitively certain a priori or self-evident truth. Quite recently, our knowing this principle a priori, without appeal to experience, was vigorously defended by William L. Craig52 and attacked (successfully in my view) by Quentin Smith.53 To be sure, I, too, find it intuitively obvious that everything that comes into being has a cause; but I cannot rule out the possibility that this powerful intuition is psychological or empirical, not a priori, that it results from (is caused by) its universal confirmation in experience, the last court of appeal in factual matters. Quentin Smith presents powerful critiques of the empirical argument for the principle of causation and of its application to the creation of the world out of nothing around fifteen billion years ago. The origin of the universe was caused by absolutely nothing, he thinks, because this causal principle is not self-evident and does not apply to the origin of the universe. "Every thing that comes to be has a cause" is well confirmed by experiences of happenings within the world, he admits; but it has no relevant application to the origin of the world itself.54 We have no experience of world-causation as such; all relevant experiences pertain only to causation within the world, Smith insists. His view resembles Kant's contention that we have no experience of causation by things in themselves; all relevant experiences pertain only to causation between appearances. Yet, Kant had to explain the existence of appearances causally. Actually, we have no direct experiences of world-origins from singularities, from "empty space," from quantum tunneling, from God, or from absolute nothingness. So Smith's argument cuts decisively against his own solution to the problem of world-origins. Admittedly, uncertainty creeps into any theistic or non-theistic account of world-creation by God or by any other transcendent

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entities like antecedent universes or Superspacetime. Smith's a-causal Accidentalism is as fatal to Antecedent Universe and Big Fizz Cosmologies as it is to Theism. Uncertainty pervades all of science and philosophy. We are never absolutely sure of the truth of the premises from which we argue; but some premises are still much more plausible than others. Without reiterating Craig's astute responses to Smith, I will offer two important objections of my own to Smith's atheistic account of world-creation from, by, and for absolutely nothing.

First, even Smith does not really believe it. He definitely presupposes the existence and operation of quantum laws, spontaneous fluctuations, quantum tunneling, and a singularity composed of infinitely compressed physical massall in alleged nothingness. Instead of a disembodied God, Smith appeals at rock bottom to the ultimate reality and causal efficacy of disembodied conceptual constructs-quantum laws, fluctuations, tunneling, and a sizeless, timeless, and imperceptible "physical" singularity. Without them, Smith has no explanation of the origin of the universe from and by nothingness. Even without his singularity, Big Accident Quantum Cosmologists always presuppose the antecedent reality of quantum laws, perturbations, tunneling, or something within absolute non-being; but they pronounce their theory only at the price of incoherence. Their nothingness is not real nothingness; it is really something after all!

Second, recall Smith's argument that our knowledge of causation, drawn from within the world, cannot be applied to the origin of the world because we have never experienced world-origins. But Smith's Accidentalist account of origins is vulnerable to exactly the same objection. In quantum physics, he claims, particles can come into existence spontaneously under conditions of quantum uncertainty, and the law of energy conservation does not apply to these circumstances. Once, such a particle inflated into our universe. But note carefully that Smith's theory of world-origins depends entirely upon an analogy with experienced quantum fields and processes within our world. As he puts it, "There is observational evidence, albeit indirect, that this uncaused emergence of energy or particles (notably virtual particles) frequently occurs."55 This could be true only within our system of spacetime, if Smith is really serious about appealing to experience. We have no "observational evidence" of world-origins.

Smith's position is implausible for many reasons. No one has ever seen a quantum particle inflate into an entire universe. All our empirical or observational knowledge of quantum effects is based upon experiences of quantum events within our world. If knowledge of universal causation drawn from within the world cannot be applied to the origin of the world, then knowledge of quantum effects drawn from within the world cannot be so applied either. Also, physicists have proved that only a closed universe could arise through quantum tunneling,56 the process by which virtual particles become actual; but ours is not a closed universe, as earlier demonstrated. Thus, Smith cannot make his case for thinking that our world is a quantum-induced Big Accident.

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We have no experience of world origins through spontaneous quantum fluctuations in absolute nothingness. All human experiences of quantum phenomena pertain only to minute quantum events within our system of spacetime. If we cannot extrapolate from the universality of causation within the world to world origins, neither can we extrapolate from quantum effects within the world to world origins. All experienced quantum effects, including those in virtually empty space, presuppose not only quantum laws but also our space, not transcendent Superspace, and definitely not pure nothingness. Empirically, the spontaneous origin of actualized particles under conditions of Heisenberg uncertainty occurs only under vacuum conditions within our system of spacetime, never in absolute nothingness; and few if any such particles endure for more than a fraction of a second to violate the Principle of Conservation. Smith actually concedes that all known quantum tunneling, by which, in theory, particles momentarily break the barrier separating potentiality from actuality, takes place within our system of spacetime.57 All known tunneling and quantum effects presuppose necessary causal conditions like our spacetime, vacuum (low energy) conditions, an actualized energy field, and perhaps even observers or prehenders (not necessarily conscious). From nothing, nothing comes, even in quantum physics.

Smith's own account of world origins is incompatible with his argument against "Everything that comes to be has a cause." It presupposes and thus grants that we can extrapolate from what is known within our spacetime to the origin of the whole of it. But if we can apply what we know about quantum laws and effects to the origin of our universe, we can also apply the universally confirmed principle of causation to world origins. That rebuts Smith's No-cause Big Accident theory of the inception of the universe. Unless everything that comes into being, including the universe, has a cause (presupposes necessary conditions), no Quantum Cosmology ever gets off the ground. Big Accident's misunderstanding of quantum physics can be extended to the whole of nature only if explanatory principles drawn from the parts can be so extended; but that lets causation back in under the wire. Any account of the origin of our universe must draw upon analogies with what happens within our universe, for that is all that we know.

Stephen Hawking maintains that "It is possible in the quantum theory for the ordinary laws of science to hold everywhere, including at the beginning of time."58 If, as Smith and Hawking suggest, the laws of quantum physics do not break down at the origin of the universe as a whole, then neither does the law of universal causation, nor the law of increasing entropy. If any explanatory principles can be extrapolated from parts to the whole, surely the universality of causation is one of them. Contra Smith, a quantum universe presupposes necessary causal conditions. But, deep down, Smith really believes that anyway. The ad hominem retort that "You do it too!" will not satisfy extreme skeptics. Still, anyone, whether an atheist or a theist, who attempts to answer the

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question, "What caused the Big Bang?" must employ concepts and principles of explanation drawn from within the universe and extend them to the origin of the whole. We could just abstain or quit trying to find a cause for the Big Bang, but the inclination to try is almost irresistible. Anyone who decrees that it simply cannot be done merely blocks the path of inquiry.

The causal principle that "Everything that comes to be has a cause," at least as necessary conditions, must be distinguished from what Victor J. Stenger calls the principle of"causal precedence," that "Cause always precedes effect." Stenger argues that at the elementary level of quantum interactions, "Cause and effect are not always distinguishable" because time is reversible. The irreversibility of time's arrow, he maintains, is an emergent property that exists only at the macroscopic level of everyday experience and common sense. 59 The solution to the two slit experiment problem, he holds, is that a particle goes "through one slit to the detector, then back in time to the source through the second slit and finally forward in time once more through either slit to the detector."60 He concedes that he is "in a minority" on the issue of the reversibility of time!61

That everything which comes into being has a cause would still be true even if we cannot always tell the difference between cause and effect, or if cause, effect, and time are reversed on the quantum level. Stenger, another Big Accident Cosmologist, also affirms that "everything can have come from nothing" in the beginning62 through quantum fluctuations in the spacetime vacuum. We now know that this actually involves the antecedent reality of necessary causal conditions like Mother Spacetime, the physical vacuum, actualized energy, habituated actualities, quantum laws, and quantum effects. In their absence, spontaneous fluctuations cannot and do not occur. All contingencies have causes.

D. No Contingency Without Causation

By definition it is true that if something exists contingently, it is causally derived from or dependent on something other than itself; but a mere definition cannot settle the substantive question of the causal dependence of the universe on God. Can a wedge be driven between the various elements that conventionally define the notion of contingent existence? Could an existing entity that endures for only a finite span of time have no cause at all even though it is possible for it not to exist? The most extreme Big Accident Cosmologists think so. They contend that the universe popped into being within the finite past as an absolute accident, requiring neither necessary nor sufficient causal conditions. If true, the universe could be contingent (having possible non-existence and finite duration), yet-in another sense-neither contingent (causally dependent) nornecessary (impossible non-existence, self-sufficient, everlasting, uncreated, and indestructible reality).

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Big Accident Cosmologists appeal to quantum theory, which really does not support their position because quantum mechanics renounces only sufficient but not necessary causal conditions. Every quantum fluctuation has necessary prerequisites like the laws of quantum physics, spacetime or Superspacetime, the minimal pure energy of a physical vacuum, and the presence of an actualized energy field. They aspire to do so, but Big Accident Cosmologists cannot avoid these necessary conditions for quantum fluctuations, primordial or not; but primordially where and how did these conditions originate? They are not metaphysically necessary beings because as wholes they are composed entirely of contingent, dependent parts. This point is well developed in Chapter Twelve, but let us now note that Big Accident Cosmology falls prey to the first two premises of the Cosmological Argument From Contingency there presented. All wholes composed of contingent beings are themselves contingent; and no necessary entities exist within our system of nature.

To summarize, extreme Big Accident Cosmology takes quantum fluctuations to their ultimate extreme and posits their reality where nothing exists to fluctuate. Our universe was created out of absolutely nothing, was caused by absolutely nothing, is absolutely nothing, and exists for absolutely no purpose. It is the Ultimate Accident. Extreme Accidentalism assumes that our universe is composed of zero energy, and that since the universe is nothing, nothing is required to create it. But a zero energy universe is very doubtful-especially ours. The kinetic energy of the primordial explosion that initiated our universe is not perfectly counterbalanced by gravity, and matter clearly prevails over antimatter in the only universe that we really know to exist. A zero-energy universe exists only in theory, but experience clearly shows that our universe is really something after all!

Extreme Accidentalists always presuppose something as a necessary ground for the universe, even if nothing more than the laws of quantum physics and spontaneous fluctuations. They fail to distinguish adequately between necessary and sufficient causal conditions. If the Big Bang lacked a sufficient cause, it does not follow that it had no necessary cause. All experience, including quantum physics, supports the causal principle that some causal conditions are necessary for everything that happens or comes to be, including the Big Bang. Scientific Cosmological Agnosticism correctly indicates that empirical science cannot identify the transcendent necessary cause of the Big Bang.

Big Accident Cosmologists have wild imaginations, but their theory is logically incoherent and cannot be squared with the facts. Like all other atheistic Quantum Cosmologists, they are driven to preposterous extremes in order to avoid God. A contingent universe cannot exist in the absence of everything; but what is the something upon which it depends for its being? What caused the Big Bang? No atheistic cosmologies examined thus far, quantum or not, give an adequate answer; but a plausible answer is forthcoming!

[Notes]

1. Alan Guth, "Starting the Universe," in Bubbles, Voids, and Bumps in Time: The New Cosmology, ed. James Cornell (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 136.

2. Edward P. Tryon, "ls the Universe a Vacuum Fluctuation?" Nature, 246 (14 December 1973), pp. 396--397.

3. Peter Atkins, The Creation (Oxford: W. H. Freeman), 1981.

4. A. Vilenkin, "Creation of Universes from Nothing," Physical Letters, 117B (1982), pp. 25-28.

5. Victor J. Stenger, Not by Design: The Origin of the Universe (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1988) and The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1995).

6. See Quentin Smith and William L. Craig, Theism. Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). By permission of Oxford University Press.

7. See Steven K. Blau and Alan Guth, "Inflationary Cosmology," in Three Hundred Years of Gravitation, eds. Stephen Hawking and Werner Israel (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 546, 556.

8. Tryon, "Is the Universe a Vacuum Fluctuation?" p. 397.

9. Ibid.

10. Atkins, The Creation, p. 119.

11. Stenger, Not by Design, p. 173. Cf Stenger, The Unconscious Quantum, pp. 21, 229.

12. Craig and Smith, Theism. Atheism. and Big Bang Cosmology, p. 127.

13. Ibid., p. 135.

14. Stenger, Not by Design, p. 174.

15. Andrei Linde, Dmitri Linde, Arthur Mezhlumian, "From the Big Bang Theory to the Theory of a Stationary Universe," Physical Review D, 49:4 (15 February 1994), p. 1792.

16. E.g., in Cosmos, Bias, Theos, eds. Henry Margenau and Roy Abraham Varghese (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1992), see Robert Jastrow (p. 46), Amo Penzias (p. 83), and Abdus Salam (p. 99). See also endnotes 44-59 in Chapter Three of this book.

17. See Kevin Krisciunas, "Science with the Keck Telescope," Sky & Telescope (September 1994 ), p. 26.

18. Stenger, The Unconscious Quantum, p. 240.

19. Ibid., p. 219.

20. Ibid., p. 220.

21. Stenger, Not By Design, p. 174.

22. Stenger, The Unconscious Quantum, p. 240.

23. Abdus Salam, "Science and Religion: Reflections on Transcendence and Secularization," in Cosmos, Bias, Theos, eds. Henry Margenau and Roy Abraham Varghese (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1992), p. 99.

24. Stenger, Not By Design, pp. 175-177.

25. A. Zee, "NonconservationofBaryon Number," in Gamow Cosmology, eds. LF. Melchiorri and R. Ruffini (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1986), p. 420.

26. Gary Steigman, "Observational Tests of Antimatter Cosmologies," Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics 14 ( 1976), p. 355.

27. John D. Barrow, Theories of Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 133-134.

28. George Smoot and Keay Davidson, Wrinkles in Time (New York: Avon Books, 1993), p. 109.

29. Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature (New York: Bantam Books. 1983), p. 284.

30. See Leon M. Ledennan and David N. Schramm, From Quarks to the Cosmos.· Tools of Discovery (New York: Scientific American Library, 1989), pp. 162-165; see also Barrow, Theories of Everything, pp. 134-135.

31. A. G. Cohen, A. De RuJula, and S. L. Glashow. "A Matter-Antimatter Universe?" Astrophysical Journal, 495:2 (10 March 1998). See also Gary Taubes. "Astrophysics: Theorists Nix Distant Antimatter Galaxies," Science, 539 ( 10 October 1997, pp. 1 ff.

32. Ledennan and Schramm, From Quarks to Cosmos, p. 163; Alan H. Guth, The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins (Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1997), p. I 07.

33. A. Karel Velan, The Multi-Universe Cosmos: The First Complete Story of the Origin of the Universe (New York: Plenum Press, 1992), pp. 350--351.

34. Michael White and John Gribbin, Stephen Hawking, A Life in Science (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), p. 211.

35. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), p. 46.

36. Stephen Hawking, ed. Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time: A Reader's Companion (New York: Bantam Books, 1992), p. 168.

37. Stephen Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays (New York: Bantam Books, 1993), pp. 147-155.

38. Ibid., pp. 147-148.

39. Peter Coles and George Ellis, "The Case for an Open Universe," Nature, 370 (25 August 1994), p. 609.

40. Ibid., p. 612.

41. Ibid., p. 614.

42. See "Old Galaxy in a Young Universe," Sky & Telescope, 93:2 (September 1996), p. 11.

43. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 133.

44. Craig and Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology, p. 301.

45. Ibid., pp. 125-129, esp. p. 128.

46. Heinz R. Pagels, Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time (New York: Bantam Books), p. 347.

47. Stenger, Not by Design, p. 12.

48. Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), p. 215.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid.

51. Roger Penrose, "What Does the Big Bang Tell Us about Quantum Gravity?" Memorie della Societa Astronomica ltaliana, 62:3 (1991), p. 608.

52. Craig and Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology, pp. 61--63.

53. lbid., pp. 178-191.

54. Ibid., p. 123.

55. Ibid., pp. 122-123.

56. David Atkatz, "Quantum Cosmology for Pedestrians," American Journal of Physics, 62:7 (1 July 1994), p. 662.

57. Craig and Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology, pp. 127-128.

58. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 133.

59. Stenger, The Unconscious Quantum, pp. 142, 150.

60. Ibid., pp. 205-206.

61. Ibid., p. 159.

62. Ibid., p. 21.

Conventional non-Everett quantum theory assumes that definiteness in and of the world results from wave-function collapse, and many Quantum Cosmologists try to apply such notions to the universe as a whole. Some Quantum Cosmologists affirm a very intimate relationship between physics and physicists, between observers and things observed. This intimacy is much clearer at the level of microscopic quantum events than at the cosmological level of accounting for the origin of the universe.

Quantum Observership says that if and when a physicist measures for the position of an electron, it then takes a position; if and when a physicist measures for its momentum, it then assumes momentum; since no observer can measure for both simultaneously, it cannot have both together. Sometimes sub-atomic entities behave like particles, sometimes like waves, depending on how observers perceive them. In themselves, apart from being observed, physical entities are nothing; the very concept is meaningless. They have no actuality in themselves; they are only bundles of possibilities. In Europe, Niels Bohr's "Copenhagen interpretation" of quantum mechanics closely linked observer and observed. In the United States, John A. Wheeler and Eugene Wigner endorsed Strong Anthropic theories of Quantum Observership that emphasize the role of observers in resolving quantum uncertainty and indefiniteness.1 Many experiments in quantum physics suggest that unobserved sub-atomic particles in themselves do not exist in a single definite state and that the process of being observed somehow affects what they are.2 The two slit experiment indicates that individual photons seem to pass through two (but not three) separate slits at once. Other experiments indicate that the act of observation significantly affects the physical state being observed. As the story goes, when two spinning particles are generated together, if one is observed to be spinning in one direction, the other instantly acquires the opposite spin, no matter how far away from the first it might be, or how Jong it has traveled to get there, or even if the decision about how to measure it is made after its departure. If widely separated particles that originated together are observed simultaneously (a difficult if not impossible feat), they do not have time to communicate; but they still have opposite spins. Quantum mechanics rejects as empirically meaningless the realistic position favored by Einstein that particles that originate together have opposite spins from the very outset and continue to have them while unobserved; whenever they are observed the viewer merely sees what has been there objectively all along. Instead, the correct spin supposedly comes into being because it is being observed; observation itself fixes the direction of spin of the second particle.3 In Quantum Observership, observation fixes all definiteness.

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In John A. Wheeler's theory of Quantum Observership, physical particles in themselves are nothing more than indefinite probabilistic wave function superpositions of all possible states all at once. According to Quantum Observership, quantum systems take on definiteness or "collapse" only when they are observed. Only measurement by an observer using a macroscopic measuring instrument causes collapse. Wheeler illustrates the essential role of measuring observers in quantum mechanics with this anecdote.

I like the story of the three baseball umpires relaxing over beer one afternoon and comparing notes. One umpire says, "I calls 'em as I sees 'em." The next umpire says: "I calls 'em as they really are." The third one says, "They ain't nothin until I calls 'em."4

According to Wheeler, in quantum mechanics "The observer is elevated from 'observer' to 'participator. "'5 He calls the necessity for observers in the universe the "Participatory Anthropic Principle." According to it, observers are essential for the very existence of the universe and all things within it.

1. Observers Create the Universe

Metaphysical Idealism asserts that only minds and their experiences and activities exist; it denies the objective existence of matter, claiming that material things exist only in being perceived. They do not exist in themselves but only in and as the experiences of observers.

Most physics is realistic and assumes that observers have nothing to do with the objective existence of the physical world. By contrast, Quantum Observership is idealistic and presumes that observers have everything to do with the existence of the physical world. According to this theory, unobserved atomic and sub-atomic entities in themselves bear no resemblance to tiny billiard balls. In themselves, they simply cannot be pictured. They are individuated and determinate only when observed. An unobserved world is nothing more than a set of sum-over potentials for all possible worlds and simply does not exist at all as a definite actuality. Eugene Wigner, who stresses the role of consciousness, claims that a definite world is brought into being only when its potentials are observed and measured by conscious beings.6 Quantum mechanics thus appears to vindicate John Stuart Mill's dictum that the physical world in itself is nothing more than a set of "permanent possibilities for perception." In quantum theory as Wheeler and Wigner interpret it, the being of physical entities consists in their being perceived. Wheeler explicitly links quantum mechanics with Bishop Berkeley's "To be is to be perceived"7 and says that in quantum mechanics "The universe would be nothing without observership as surely as a motor would be dead without electricity. "8 All empirical evidence for the Big Bang is created by observership, and so is the Big Bang itself.9

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Observers create the world by experiencing it and reflecting upon it. Wheeler says that "The observer is participator in genesis,"10 and "Observership brings the universe into being."11 Thus, the world must be compatible with the existence of observers, for without observers there is no world. By extrapolating backwards from what we perceive to be happening now, we (and not God) create the past, the entire natural history of the universe from the very beginning. So, what caused the Big Bang? We did, says Quantum Observership!

2. Critique of Quantum Observership

Quantum Observership, as just described, has serious problems that make it extremely implausible as an ultimate explanatory hypothesis.

A. Incompatibility With Cosmic and Biological Evolution

The main problem is that Quantum Observership requires our conscious existence long before we actually exist. Conscious observers like us create the Big Bang, but the Big Bang creates all conscious observers! Fred Hallberg rightly indicates that the theory is logically incompatible with plausible scientific accounts of cosmic and biological evolution, including human origins. Hallberg explains:

Wheeler emphasizes that life and consciousness entails both biological evolution, and prebiological physical and chemical evolution ["Genesis and Observership," pp. 3, 5]. Yet all these forms of evolution involve very specific interactions among highly individuated molecules. So his story seems to require specific, individuated events and entities before consciousness is present to individuate them. 12

A more plausible and realistic account says that innumerable physical structures and processes, including our galaxy, solar system, and planet existed for billions of years before we or any other conscious observers came into being. Just because observation affects the definiteness of quantum-level events, it does not follow that they have no definiteness at all when not being observed. Throughout fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution, the unobserved physical world in itself was sufficiently definite to do all the things that Big Bang Cosmology says that it did. The unobserved world evolved either from an initial singularity of nothingness or from minimal Planck dimensions through exponential inflation (perhaps) to an astronomically vast cosmos, unpopulated for eons by any conscious observers. Definite physical forces like gravity, the strong nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, and the weak force, emerged from the original Grand Unification. As the universe expanded and cooled, a primordial soup of radiant energy and sub-atomic particles gave way to discrete

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atoms, at first mainly of hydrogen and helium. Under the influence of gravity clouds of these gaseous atoms consolidated to form definite galaxies, stars, and planets. Unobserved atoms of heavier elements, manufactured by nucleosynthesis in supernovas, were sufficiently determinate to produce planets. On at least one planet, earth, definite molecules of carbon dioxide, water, ammonia, methane, and so, on eventually combined to produce DNA in living cells. Unobserved living cells increased in complexity and definiteness and united with other cells to form complex multicellular organisms. After billions of years of evolution, some complex organisms became conscious observers. A few even became quantum physicists and cosmologists!

Yet, according to Quantum Observership, only with the advent of conscious observers and measurers does nature in itself acquire any definiteness at all, even with respect to the instant of its origin in the Big Bang. Without a definite world, no conscious observers exist; but without conscious observers, no definite world exists! The idealistic interpretation of quantum physics founders on this contradiction. John Wheeler recognized the problem, but he did not solve it.13 He only perpetuates the contradiction when he writes, "Beginning with the big bang, the universe expands and cools. After eons of dynamic development it gives rise to observership. Acts of observer-participancy in tum give tangible "reality" to the universe not only now but back to the beginning. "14 Richard Rorty says that realism, with its concerns for objective truth and objective existence, makes no practical difference, 15 but it does. Unless a highly definite universe existed objectively on its own back to the beginning, we would not be here; our being here cannot give the universe and our biochemical environment a reality that our own existence presupposes. Quantum physics is still in its infancy, but one way or another it must overcome the paradoxical antirealism of Quantum Observership. Quantum physicists disagree on whether the physical world is completely indeterminate in itself, or only partly so. The complete indefiniteness of the Quantum Observership interpretation is extreme. In a less radical Critical Realism, the physical indefiniteness of nature is only partial; the sensory modalities of conscious observers add some kinds and degrees of definiteness to things perceived, but not all of it.

Critical Realism can resolve the paradoxes and puzzles of Quantum Observership and still preserve the genuine advances of quantum physics, severed from the pretentious Idealistic Metaphysics with which it is too often associated. If physical things in themselves are individuated and definite to a high degree, but not completely so, conscious observers would not be required to structure the physical world. The sensory modalities and mechanisms of conscious observers may add something, but not everything, to what is given perceptually; observers do not create what exists in itself. A partly realistic position must try to tell us which is which-which properties are objective, and which are mind-dependent.

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Realism says that a largely determinate physical world exists in itself apart from conscious observation; we perceive certain sensory properties because physical things actually have them and cause us to perceive them. True perceptions accurately reflect objective properties, but illusions and false ones do not. True beliefs accurately describe objective realities, but false beliefs characterize them incorrectly. Realism comes in many varieties. For Naive Realism, objectively existing things have all of the properties that we perceive them to have; but a long tradition of Critical Realism dating back to the Greek Atomists, and resurrected by the originators of modem natural science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, takes a less extreme view. Critical Realism has many contemporary defenders. 16 It traditionally asserted that "secondary" properties of perceived objects like their color, taste, odor, sound, and perceived temperature are "subjective" or mind dependent; they are added to our percepts by our own creative perceptual modalities and do not exist objectively in nature itself. However, the "primary" physical, spatial, or spatiotemporal properties of things like their size, shape, weight, position, resistance, and motion exist both in our perceptions and objectively in things perceived. Primary properties are the metric or mathematically measurable and quantifiable characteristics of physical things, both in themselves, and as perceived. Our attempts to observe o'r "measure" quantum-level occurrences always changes their properties, but this does not imply that they have no properties at all when we are not observing them.

In idealistic Quantum Observership, primary qualities are just as minddependent as secondary qualities. Idealistic interpretations of quantum mechanics may even border on Positivism, arguing that it is meaningless to postulate the objective existence of any unobserved physical entities and processes in themselves, even their primary properties, because, obviously, we can never observe or even imagine observing such things. As Werner Heisenberg indicated in his Philosophical Problems of Quantum Physics,

In modem physics, atoms possess geometrical qualities in no higher degree than color, taste, etc. The atom of modem physics can only be symbolized by a partial differential equation in an abstract multidimensional space. Only the experiment of an observer forces the atom to indicate a position, a color and a quantity of heat. All the qualities of the atom of modem physics are derived, it has no immediate and direct physical properties at all, i.e. every type of visual conception we might wish to design is eo ipso faulty. Quantum theory made the atom into something inaccessible to our senses or our imagination, unlike objects within our daily experience. An atom or, more correctly, an electron no longer displays 'in itself' ('an sich') even the simplest geometrical and mechanical properties but it shows them only to the extent to which they can be made accessible to observation by external interference. 17

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In 1954, Wolfgang Pauli attacked the "hidden variables" of Einstein's physical realism by saying that "One should no more rack one's brain about the problem of whether something one cannot know anything about exists all the same than about the ancient question of how many angels are able to sit on the point of a needle."18 Quantum Positivism regards all speculation about what things are when we cannot observe or know them as meaningless.

Actually, we should rack our brains about whether the physical stuff of the world existed objectively in relatively determinate physical states for billions of years before conscious observers evolved. This must be so, or we physical, biological, and embodied observers would not exist! Quantum Observership's metaphysical dogma that atomic and sub-atomic physical entities are nothing more than infinite sets of indeterminate possibilities until they are consciously observed must be renounced, along with Idealistic Metaphysics, if we are to have a plausible scientific account of cosmic and biological evolution. The obvious solution is that quantum entities in themselves are not just infinite sets of potentialities for definiteness. Quantum Critical Realism holds that they contain within themselves a high degree of definiteness inherited from the past, combined with a finite set of potentials or possibilities for further self-determination. Real wavicles are both relatively determinate particles as well as waves, not just totally indeterminate "wave functions" alone.

B. Idealism vs. Realism

Idealistic interpretations of quantum physics must answer this fundamental question: What causes observers to have sensory experiences? For the realistic dualist or materialist, matter does the job. For Bishop Berkeley, God, not matter, produces all our sensations. For Kant, totally unknowable things or realities in themselves (which are not supposed to cause anything because only appearances can be causes) cause our sensory experiences. For the skeptic David Hume, our sensations are of"unknown origin."

Quantum Observership cannot explain how infinitely complex sets of pure possibilities, totally lacking the power of actual beings, can act upon the sensory organs, nerve cells, and brains of living biological observers like us and cause us to perceive one definite and common world. In fact, it cannot account for the objective existence of sense organs, much less cells, and brains! How can the absolutely indeterminate bring about the partly or completely determinate? How can pure possibilities be efficient causes? How can living biological observers have definite sensory organs, nerve cells, and brains if the unobserved physical world has no definiteness in itself? Quantum Observership has no good answers. In Idealistic Metaphysics, nerve cells and brains exist only as relatively infrequent objects of perception, but not in themselves. In light of what contemporary physics has revealed, how should we conceive of the physical or material world?

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i. Critical Realism and Quantum/Relativity Matter

Quantum Observership aspires to be anti-metaphysical; but it is both epistemologically anti-realistic and metaphysically idealistic. Thoughts and macroscopic sensory experiences are everything. No actual determinate world in itself exists below the level of macroscopic observables, not even one of primary properties; and there are no objective answers or scientific truths because there are no independently existing objects. In Quantum Observership, no objectively existing world of space/time/mass/energy exists; no atoms, protons, electrons, or other particles or wavicles exist objectively in and of themselves. Since they don't exist at all in themselves, they do not have even partly definite size, shape, position, weight, resistance, velocity, and momentum (which is mass multiplied by velocity). Thus, our questions about independent realities have no correct answers. Correspondence theories of truth and perception are rejected. Concepts, propositions, and sensations have no objective referents; they merely cohere with other concepts, beliefs, and experiences over time; or they fail to do so. Being consists in being perceived, nothing more. Truth consists in coherence with other beliefs, not with correspondence to reality. Critical Realists, by contrast, think that a real world exists beyond our perceptions, and that it closely resembles the spatially extended and mathematically measurable qualities of our sensations. Scientific and cosmological beliefs refer to this real world. True empirical beliefs describe correctly an objectively existing world of space/time/mass/energy; false beliefs misdescribe it. In modern chemistry, electrons and protons in themselves are often said to lack secondary qualities of color, taste, odor, and sound; but they still have primary properties of size, shape, weight, resistance, velocity, and momentum. Yet, in critically realistic quantum physics, the objective reality of these properties cannot be exactly what they were conceived to be in pre-quantum classical physics. Before quantum theory, classical particle physics was Newtonian in spirit. The primary properties of subatomic particles were thought to be exactly like those of billiard balls, only smaller. All the way down to the smallest particles, Newtonian matter in itself possessed primary qualities in a fully definite and determinate manner. By contrast, in Quantum Critical Realism, some of the primary properties of quantum matter exist only indefinitely, indeterminately, by degrees, and relative to prehenders or measurers (who need not be conscious beings).

The Whiteheadian concept of"prehension" is fruitful and illuminating in understanding quantum matter. Prehending is the temporal process of grasping something or taking it in experientially. Prehenders are temporally experiencing or prehending subjects or momentary occasions of experience that take data from past events into themselves and actively process this received information in a variety of ways. Perishing past events causally transmit or imbue what they can of themselves into their successors, which actively receive, integrate, and

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thus prehend that data into themselves. They make their own fleeting creative contribution to ongoing reality and perish themselves, to be pretended in turn by their own temporal successors.

Consider ten important contrasts between classical and quantum matter. They differ significantly with respect to (1) definiteness/indefiniteness of spatial extension, (2) definiteness/indefiniteness of position and motion, (3) definiteness/indefiniteness of location, (4) continuity/discontinuity of existence, (5) causal determinateness/indeterminateness, (6) internal vacuousness/sensitivity, (7) local/non-local causation, (8) absolute/relative spatial properties, (9) absolute/relative temporal properties, and (10)organic holistic unrelatedness/interrelatedness.

(1) Definiteness/indefiniteness of Spatial & tension. Classical electrons, protons, and other particles had fully definite spatial extension, that is, size, shape, and position, at all times; but quantum particles have merely a fairly definite size, shape, and position-but only when they lack definite momentum and velocity, and only when some measurement or prehension (which need not be conscious) somehow takes account of just those properties. When we know a particle's pace of passage, we cannot know its place. When it has a definite place, it cannot have a definite pace. Data about pace and place cannot be prehended simultaneously. Realistically construed, they cannot exist simultaneously. How we or other non-conscious prehenders try to "measure" for them partly determines what they can be.

(2) Definiteness/indefiniteness of Position and Motion. Classical physical particles had a fully definite and discoverable velocity and momentum at all times, but quantum particles have merely a fairly definite velocity and momentum at best-but only when they lack full definiteness in size, shape, and position, and only when something prehends, takes account of, or experiences just those aspects of their motion. When we prehend a particle's place, we cannot know its pace; particles cannot be, or be prehended as, simultaneously definite in both ways. The idea is odd, but physical reality just is odd. Things are what they are only interrelationally; but these interrelations exist objectively, not merely within consciousness, says Quantum Critical Realism

(3) Definiteness/indefiniteness of Location. Classical physical particles had what Alfred North Whitehead called "simple location," a fully definite, determinate, and independent spatial position or locus at all times, but quantum physical particles behave like ''wavicles," being spread or smeared out over small but indefinite regions of space at any given time and at different times. Particle aspects of quantum-level entities that constitute societies of successive events are always accompanied and guided by wave aspects. In two-slit experiments, the waves go through both slits, even though the particles go through only one. String theorists speculate that the smallest and most basic constituents of matter are very short and small looped (in most versions) strings of energy. Every string, qua string, in every kind of particle is exactly like every other; and

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differences between kinds of particles result from differences in the vibrational frequencies and amplitudes of the tiny strings in their cores. 19 String theory, currently unverified, says that all the observed properties of the physical world can be explained if under different conditions these too-small-to-be-observed strings undulate, ball up, tie knots, disappear and reappear, resonate harmoniously (or disharmoniously) with other strings, and are otherwise sensitive to their environments. These issues need not be settled here; at present, string theory is little more than an intricate mathematical game with little or no empirical grounding. For the moment, we note simply that rapidly and constantly vibrating strings, or smeared out particles and wavicles, could never have the definite independent locus of substantively enduring pointlike classical particles. They may essentially lack other kinds of definiteness as well.

(4) Continuity/discontinuity of Existence. Classical physical particles were thought to exist without interruption and to move continuously through the infinitely divisible continua of Newtonian space and time. Electrons, for example, moved smoothly through the infinite number of points into which their supposedly perfect circular orbits are divisible. By contrast, quantum particles exist and move only discontinuously from place to place without passing through the intervening spaces, and the orbits to which they are restricted are broad shells, not perfect circles. When a photon is added to an orbiting electron, the "excited" electron prehends this addition, then jumps up to the next allowable orbit-like region without traversing the quantum-forbidden space that separates allowable orbits. Then, almost immediately, but we can't predict exactly when, it may throw off the photon and jump back down without passing continuously through the intervening space between orbit-like-shells. Something similar happens when an electron or any other particle moves forward within its own orbital shell or quantum-permitted region. Its particle features move forward as so many periodic and discontinuous pulsations of energy, unpredictably here, unpredictably there, somewhere within the tiny region of its orbit-like shell, but never in an exactly circular or linear path. Whitehead, who neglected its wave-like features, compared an electron's orbit to the travels of an automobile that appears only at milestones but nowhere in between!20 Sten Oldenwald says that physical particles play "a hop-scotch game to avoid gaps where spacetime doesn't exist."21 Physical particles endure through time only as so many successively pulsating repetitions and ongoing prehensions of their particular kind of particle/wave/string patterns-electron forms, proton forms, photon forms, and the like.

(5) Causal Determinateness/indeterminateness. Causal determinism was believed to be complete for classical physical particles. In rigid conformity to exact and efficacious physical laws, all motions and changes made by classical physical particles followed exactly from necessary and sufficient antecedent formal and physical conditions and were in principle susceptible to absolutely precise mathematical measurement. If the positions and velocities of all particles

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were known, everything could be predicted. By contrast, quantum particles, lacking absolute positions and velocities, are not fully and predictably determined by and knowable from quantum laws and antecedent physical conditions. Every mathematically measurable quantity of physical entities is susceptible to unpredictable fluctuations or perturbations. Neither we nor an ace predictor like God can tell or predict when individual particles will change orbits, exactly where they will appear next within broad-band orbital shells, which slits they will go through, the directions in which they will fly when scattered, or exactly which ones will decay and produce atomic radiation. Quantum uncertainty, indeterminateness, and spontaneity pervade all physical reality. By their erratic behavior, vast numbers of individuated quantum-size entity/events create quantum laws, which merely summarize formally and probabilistically both their collective regularities and their individual eccentricities. Formal laws as such exert no efficient causality of their own. The laws of nature are epistemologically useful but ontologically powerless.

(6) Internal Vacuousness/sensitivity. Classical physical particles were internally inert, solid, vacuous, and fully actual; but quantum wave/particles are at best only partly determinate internally, and they are environmentally sensitive and reactive. In part, they are indeterminate sets of possibilities in process of becoming fully actual. Each of a wavicle's fleeting pulsations of energy in some unconscious way takes on or prehends a determinate form (electron, photon, and so on) inherited from immediately past pulsations, and each projects this form into the future as it perishes in time. Wave/particles are not internally inert, solid, impenetrable, and vacuous; they take their own immediate constitutions and past and future environments into account in deciding what to do or what to become next. All physical wave/particles experience and are internally sensitive to their external environments, at least unconsciously. They know what kind of wave/particles they have been in the past. As they confront the future, they internally take into account not only their own past but that of their wider environment. What wavicles are and what they do is largely constituted by their relations. Protons, neutrons, electrons, and other particles know when they are and when they are not located within atoms; they know one another's natures and whereabouts; and they behave themselves accordingly. Photons, electrons, and other wave/ particles seem to know whether or not they are surrounded by and partly composed of waves; they respond actively when photon quanta are attached to themselves; they are aware of how their twin particles are spinning. When they are confronted by the environmental prospect of going through either one slit or two, they know the difference in advance and behave accordingly.

Based on earlier work by Louis de Broglie and David Bohrn, John S. Bell offers a highly plausible realistic but relational solution to the particle-wave dualism inherent in the two slit experiment:

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A particle passing through just one of two holes in a screen could be influenced by waves propagating through both holes. And so influenced that the particle does not go where the waves cancel out, but is attracted to where they cooperate. This idea seems to me so natural and simple, to resolve the wave-particle dilemma in such a clear and ordinary way, that it is a great mystery to me that it was so generally ignored.22

The idea that all elemental particles are accompanied and perhaps even guided by waves is now widely accepted in quantum physics, as expressed in the very concept of "wavicle." Realistic objectivists like David Bohm and B. J. Hiley completely repudiate the wave-function-collapse account of quantum-level definiteness. They contend, probably correctly, that most of the dither about definiteness resulting only from collapsing wave functions just ignores the fact that wavicles are particles as well as waves. Wave collapse conundrums assume incorrectly that in themselves wavicles are nothing more than indeterminate waves and forget that they are also particles bearing their own definiteness.23 Bohm and Hiley contend that in a two slit experiment, the particle definitely goes through one slit, we know not which, while the accompanying wave goes through both slits.24

(7) Local/non-local Causation. Classical Newtonian material particles were also externally inert, naturally at rest, utterly incapable of self-initiated motion or of being moved by distant entities. They could be moved only mechanically by other external physical entities with which they were in direct physical contact. Both Newton and Einstein were horrified by the thought of what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance."

But isn't gravity action at a distance? Not for Newton! Gravity, for Newton, was not a physical force; it was a divine force. It was a manifestation of God's direct activity in moving non-contiguous objects lawfully in relation to one another. Through gravity, God moves otherwise immovable material objects that are separated from one another by distance.25 Later atheistic Newtonians conveniently ignored this feature of classical Newtonian matter/gravity. Einsteinian gravity also involves no action at a distance; it consists of curvature of space emanating directly and with continuity from mutually attracting entities. In contemporary quantum physics, wavicles are neither externally inert nor internally vacuous. They never exist in inert independence. Action at a distance is allowed, indeed required. Wavicles are definitely not internally vacuous. Information is integral to their internal existence, for they can somehow anticipate the presence of two slits before they get there. They are aware of open alternatives and in some primitive way can choose among them. In quantum non-locality (explained more later), information about what happens to one wavicle is instantaneously transmitted to and registers with another, perhaps at great distances.

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(8) Absolute/relative Spatial Properties. Classical particles existed in absolute Newtonian space and time, which were supposed to be uniformly the same throughout the whole universe. By contrast, when combined with relativity theory, quantum particles have only a relativistic locus in Einsteinian spacetime. They are constituted by their spatiotemporality. Their primary spatial properties of size, shape, resistance to change, position, and momentum vary immensely, depending on how other events prehend them and on the speed with which they and their accompanying spacetime frames are being accelerated through the universe. A spaceship accelerated to the speed of light would flatten out; its mass would increase to infinity; and it would offer infinite resistance to further increases in speed, which is why acceleration to or beyond the speed of light is so implausible. Approximations to the speed of light would be approximations to infinity. No matter what its speed, a Newtonian spaceship, by contrast, would always have exactly the same size, shape, mass, and inertia; but overwhelming evidence now indicates that ours is not a Newtonian world. Aristotle defined change or motion as "transition from potentiality to actuality," but this idea never gave rise to a single mathematical formula that empowers human beings, scientists in particular, for prediction and control. Modem mathematical physics began when Galileo replaced Aristotle's qualitative definition with a quantitative definition. Motion or velocity equals the space or distance traveled divided by the time required for the trek: v = s/t. Thus, if we travel a hundred miles in two hours, our speed or velocity is fifty miles per hour; and if we travel sixty miles in three hours, our velocity is twenty miles per hour. This formula, in which velocity varies with differences in time or distance, works perfectly well with everything except the speed of light. The speed of light in an invariant absolute in an otherwise relativistic universe.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, physicists James Clerk Maxwell and Albert A. Michelson considered the speed of light and made some remarkable discoveries that paved the way for Einstein's insight that light is a universal constant and does not vary in speed with variations in distance and time. Because the speed of light is constant, space and time cannot be Newtonian absolutes, so Einstein proclaimed in his "Special Theory of Relativity" in 1905.

Time and temporal processes would proceed at the same pace everywhere and at every speed if Newton had been right. In fact, however, one earthborn twin traveling for an interval on a spaceship at close-to-light speed would be much younger when she returned than the twin who remained on earth. The physical clocks in her spaceship and her own biological clocks would slow down in proportion to accelerated speed. The speed of light can be constant at all speeds only if primary properties of size, shape, mass, resistance, mass, and time itself vary with speed. Classical matter possessed primary properties absolutely; but collectively if not individually, quantum matter possesses them only relative to acceleration. Time slows down and mass increases as velocity increases, and its pace is faster as mass and velocity decrease.

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Since the pace of time itself is affected by the speed with which a spacetime frame flows through the universe, are our cosmological calculations concerning the age of the universe affected? Would other observers at other speeds get more than, or less than, fifteen billion years for the age of the universe? Does the universe have this age only from our own relative vantage point? Probably so, in answer to all of these questions; but the world of nature manifests much more uniformity than popularizes of relativity often lead us to believe. We have learned in recent years that a uniform microwave background is universally accessible; and its constancy could function as a uniform frame of temporal reference for all space travelers.26 Light is not the only form of energy with the constancy of the speed of light; all electromagnetic radiation travels at that speed. Quantum non-locality, which we haven't learned to put to practical use, instantly connects distant parts of the universe. The basic structures and laws of nature are the same no matter how fast anyone is going.

Any observers moving at any speed anywhere in the universe should be able to view the overall structure of the universe and determine that it came into being at some point in the finite past. Without being able to correlate their watches and their calculations perfectly, all intelligent beings within the universe should be able to discover the Big Bang and conclude that our universe was created a finite while ago.

The universe-wide instantaneous action at a distance of quantum nonlocality restores additional physical meaning to cosmic simultaneity, despite our inability to use non-locality to send instant messages to observers elsewhere in the universe. Still, all intelligent observers scattered throughout the universe should be able to discover that the Big Bang happened, though if they could communicate they might not be able to agree about precisely when it happened.

(9) Absolute/relative Temporal Properties. Classical matter possessed its spatial properties in complete independence of time. Newtonian space and time were completely independent of one another and of the material masses within them. If the temporal duration of an electron were cut infinitesimally thin, it would still fully possess its definiteness of spatial size, shape, motion, mass, and so forth. But the complete independence of time, space, and mass do not apply to quantum/relativity matter. Minimal finite temporal durations, what Whitehead called "specious presents," are required for the existence of any spatial properties at all, and minimal spatiality is required for the existence of any temporality at all. Spaces and times can be sliced infinitely thin by imagination or calculation, but no infinitesimals can actually exist. Nothing can really exist for less time than Planck time (10-43 second) or in less than Planck space (10-33 centimeters). To exist spatially as matter, as extended stuff, entities must also have some temporal or durational properties. In contemporary physics, time and space are inescapably interdependent, not totally independent as they were in classical physics.

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(10) Organic Holistic Unrelatedness/interrelatedness. Classical physical particles are what they are quite independently of all else. Since they exist contingently, they require causes; but they do not require anything else to be what they are. They can be isolated and studied quite independently of their relations with other things. By contrast, in quantum world-views, both microscopic and macroscopic realities are what they are by virtue of their internal relatedness with other things with which they form interdependent wholes. Nothing requires only itself to be what it is. All properties are relational properties; holistic relations to other things are internal to the constitutions of all realities. All previously identified traits of matter involve organic relational wholes in which they parts are what they are by virtue of the measuring or pretending wholes within which they exist. Smeared out quantum-level entities have only relative but not absolute definiteness of spatial extension. When measured or pretended for definiteness of position and motion they have them separately but not together. Their precise location is relationally definite by degrees. They exist discontinuously in relational spurts. They are partly caused by the externalities that they internalize and are partly self-caused. They are internally sensitive and responsive to their surroundings. They are partly what they are by virtue of local and partly by non-local causation. They are constituted by their spatial and temporal relations, and these condition all their other properties.

Thus, even matter is not what it used to be anymore! Commenting on Gilbert Ryle's characterization of mind/matter dualism as "the ghost in the machine," Paul Davies and John Gribbin tell us that "Today, on the brink of the twenty-first century, we can see that Ryle was right to dismiss the notion of the ghost in the machine-not because there is no ghost, but because there is no machine. "27 Today we see clearly that matter in the classical sense just does not exist at all. A critically realistic theory of perceptual correspondence to objective reality must be adjusted to take account of quantum/relativity physics. It must emphasize both the definiteness within holistic interrelatedness of, and the partial but not total spontaneity, indefiniteness, indeterminateness, and unpredictability of, the depths of nature that physics has unearthed. Once proper adjustments have been made, matter still exists objectively and retains a great deal of definiteness in and of itself alongside its unpredictable self-creativity. Despite relativity physics and quantum measurement problems, as Victor J. Stenger notes,

Many properties of matter are fixed and, for practical purposes permanent. They can be determined without their respective measurements interfering with one another. These include rest mass, electric charge, magnetic momentum, and spin. Material bodies possess many unambiguous features that are not the slightest bit ephemeral.28

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In a similar vein, Holmes Rolston, III indicates,

We must not be overwhelmed with this relativity of everything, for many things are not observer-dependent. The equations, the basic laws are invariant. Some of the physical constants of nature-the speed of light, the charge on an electron, or the number of atomic shells, the atomic table, chemical reactions, and so on-will presumably be the same for all observers, as will ordinarily be the order of succession of causally related events. Thus, there is considerable objectivity in relativity theory. 29

A partly or critically realistic interpretation of the physical world is possible if the primary properties of unobserved sub-atomic entities and processes are to some degree interrelatedly determinate apart from consciousness and transmit that determinateness to their successors, including our conscious sensory experiences. In response to those quantum experiments indicating that observation of one photon affects the spin of another photon, Roger Penrose, who declares himself to be a realist,30 says,

The best suggestion that I can make at this stage would be for a picture involving some sort of partially formed, partly bifurcating spacetime, where the nature of the spacetime has not been adequately resolved until the second photon observation has taken place.31

If the contents of spacetime are partly formed apart from conscious observation, and if they correlate to that extent with conscious perception or prehension, partial or Critical Realism is correct. Quantum Critical Realism, adapted to quantum/relativity physics, still allows enough definiteness in objectively existing nature to account for cosmic and biological evolution. This is probably the best available argument for the truth of Critical Realism.

Most physicists have not abandoned realism for an idealistic metaphysics, despite the advances and challenges of quantum mechanics. Most cosmological theories are to some degree realistic. The Standard Model of Big Bang Cosmology assumes that an objectively existing universe of space/time/mass/energy came into being between ten and twenty billion years ago. The Inflation modification makes the same assumption but tries (successfully?) to make it more plausible. Infinite universe theories like Steady State and Plasma Cosmology affirm that an objectively existing universe of space/time/mass/energy is literally infinite-in itself-not just in our perceptions, thoughts, and theories. Antecedent Universe Cosmologies postulate objectively existing universes that preceded and caused our own. World-ensemble theories postulate an objectively existing Superspacetime that gives birth to many objectively co-existing universes, some perhaps erupting or branching from others. Most quantum and relativity physicists and scientific cosmologists agree that space/time/mass/energy are insepara-

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ble; but they do not believe that they exist only in our experiences, thoughts, and theories. Quantum Observership contends that this quasi-realistic approach is all wrong; but for many reasons like those given in the preceding discussion, most physicists think that Quantum Observership is all wrong.

A few dissenting scientists and philosophers of science have subjectivist leanings, at least in their weaker moments. In 1983, a younger Paul Davies expressed antirealism when he wrote that "The commonsense view of the world, in terms of objects that really exist 'out there' independently of our observations, totally collapses in the face of the quantum factor."32 In some of his moods, the early Albert Einstein surmised that space and time are ultimately unreal and exist only as human illusions. He came to this conclusion, not on scientific grounds, but because he subscribed to a Spinozistic metaphysics. Kantian idealism would give the same results. Later, Einstein vehemently opposed the idealistic, anti-realistic implications of Quantwn Observership.33

Quantum Observership gives quantum mechanics a robustly anti-realistic flavor, but most masters of quantum mechanics are realists. To the suggestion that we should just follow the rules of quantum physics pragmatically without asking questions about reality or trying to form a picture of reality, Roger Penrose responds: "This seems to me to be wholly unreasonable. Physics, after all, constitutes our best way of groping for the true nature of the real world in which we find ou