Demons in the History of Science Part one of two: Laplace’s Demon Some might say that the mode

Demons in the History of Science Part one of two: Laplace’s Demon Some might say that the modern day physicists have it easy; they can appeal to the public with their stories of eleven-dimensional universes, time travel, and stories of a quantum world that is stranger than fiction. But the basis of such appeal remains the same as the appeal for pursuing science always was and will be: a greater understanding of the environment, ourselves, and knowledge itself. Just like Schrödinger’s cat, a popular thought experiment by famous physicist Erwin Schrödinger, Laplace’s Demon and Maxwell’s Demon are two other thought-experiments in scientific thinking which are important for what they reveal about our understanding of the universe. It may only interest you to learn of these thought-experiments for the sake of reinforcing the philosophical relevance and beauty that science has always sought to provide. Jim-Al Khalili, author of Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed, affirms that fate as a scientific idea was disproved three-quarters of a century ago, referring to the discoveries of quantum mechanics as proof, of course. But what does he mean when he says this? Prior to such discoveries, it may have been okay to argue for a deterministic universe, meaning that scientists could still consider the idea of a world in which one specific input must result in one specific output and thus the sum all these actions and their consequences could help “determine” the overall outcome, or fate, of such a world. Pierre-Simon Laplace, born on March 23, 1794, was a French mathematician and astronomer whose work largely founded the statistical interpretation of probability known as Bayesian Probability. He lived in a world before Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and Chaos Theory and thus he was allowed to imagine such a deterministic universe: We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes. Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities Laplace thought about what it would be like if it were possible to know the positions, masses, and velocities of all the atoms in existence and hypothesized a being, later known as Laplace’s Demon, which would be able to know such information and such calculate all future events.  With our knowledge of physics, The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Chaos Theory, such a being could not exist because such information about atoms cannot be observed with enough precision to calculate and predict future events. (By the way, “enough” precision means infinite precision!) This might be good news for those who believe in free will as its concept would not be permitted in a deterministic universe governed by Laplace’s demon.  Interestingly enough, The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Chaos Theory are not the only restrictive challenges that scientists have faced in trying to understand the properties and bounds of our universe. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is also of concern to scientists and philosophers alike, as we will learn with the birth of another mind-boggling demon. -- source link

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