Reference: Eddington’s 1927 Book
This paper presents Chapter XIV (section 2) from the book THE NATURE OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD by A. S. EDDINGTON. The contents of this book are based on the lectures that Eddington delivered at the University of Edinburgh in January to March 1927.
The paragraphs of original material are accompanied by brief comments in color, based on the present understanding. Feedback on these comments is appreciated.
The heading below links to the original materials.
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Causation and Time’s Arrow
Cause and effect are closely bound up with time’s arrow; the cause must precede the effect. The relativity of time has not obliterated this order. An event Here-Now can only cause events in the cone of absolute future; it can be caused by events in the cone of absolute past; it can neither cause nor be caused by events in the neutral wedge, since the necessary influence would in that case have to be transmitted with a speed faster than light. But curiously enough this elementary notion of cause and effect is quite inconsistent with a strictly causal scheme. How can I cause an event in the absolute future, if the future was predetermined before I was born? The notion evidently implies that something may be born into the world at the instant Here-Now, which has an influence extending throughout the future cone but no corresponding linkage to the cone of absolute past. The primary laws of physics do not provide for any such one-way linkage; any alteration in a prescribed state of the world implies alterations in its past state symmetrical with the alterations in its future state. Thus in primary physics, which knows nothing of time’s arrow, there is no discrimination of cause and effect; but events are connected by a symmetrical causal relation which is the same viewed from either end.
What is born into the world at this instant must have corresponding linkage in the absolute past.
Primary physics postulates a strictly causal scheme, but the causality is a symmetrical relation and not the one-way relation of cause and effect. Secondary physics can distinguish cause and effect but its foundation does not rest on a causal scheme and it is indifferent as to whether or not strict causality prevails.
The lever in a signal box is moved and the signal drops. We can point out the relation of constraint which associates the positions of lever and signal; we can also find that the movements are not synchronous, and calculate the time-difference. But the laws of mechanics do not ascribe an absolute sign to this time-difference; so far as they are concerned we may quite well suppose that the drop of the signal causes the motion of the lever. To settle which is the cause, we have two options. We can appeal to the signalman who is confident that he made the mental decision to pull the lever; but this criterion will only be valid if we agree that there was a genuine decision between two possible courses and not a mere mental registration of what was already predetermined. Or we can appeal to secondary law
which takes note of the fact that there was more of the random element in the world when the signal dropped than when the lever moved. But the feature of secondary law is that it ignores strict causation; it concerns itself not with what must happen but with what is likely to happen. Thus distinction of cause and effect has no meaning in the closed system of primary laws of physics; to get at it we have to break into the scheme, introducing considerations of volition or of probability which are foreign to it. This is rather analogous to the ten vanishing coefficients of curvature which could only be recognised if the closed system of the world were broken into by standards foreign to it.
For convenience I shall call the relation of effect to cause causation, and the symmetrical relation which does not distinguish between cause and effect causality. In primary physics causality has completely replaced causation. Ideally the whole world past and future is connected into a deterministic scheme by relations of causality. Up till very recently it was universally held that such a determinate scheme must exist (possibly subject to suspension by supernatural agencies outside the scope of physics) ; we may therefore call this the “orthodox” view. It was, of course, recognised that we were only acquainted with part of the structure of this causal scheme, but it was the settled aim of theoretical physics to discover the whole.
More appropriate view seems to be that of complete causality (symmetrical relation which does not distinguish between cause and effect).
This replacement in orthodox science of causation by causality is important in one respect. We must not let causality borrow an intuitive sanction which really belongs only to causation. We may think we have an intuition that the same cause cannot have two alternative effects; but we do not claim any intuition that the same effect may not spring from two alternative causes. For this reason the assumption of a rigid determinateness enforced by relations of causality cannot be said to be insisted on by intuition.
What is the ground for so much ardent faith in the orthodox hypothesis that physical phenomena rest ultimately on a scheme of completely deterministic laws? I think there are two reasons—
(1) The principal laws of Nature which have been discovered are apparently of this deterministic type, and these have furnished the great triumphs of physical prediction. It is natural to trust to a line of progress which has served us well in the past. Indeed it is a healthy attitude to assume that nothing is beyond the scope of scientific prediction until the limits of prediction actually declare themselves.
(2) The current epistemology of science presupposes a deterministic scheme of this type. To modify it involves a much deeper change in our attitude to natural knowledge than the mere abandonment of an untenable hypothesis.
In explanation of the second point we must recall that knowledge of the physical world has to be inferred from the nerve-messages which reach our brains, and the current epistemology assumes that there exists a determinate scheme of inference (lying before us as an ideal and gradually being unravelled). But, as has already been pointed out, the chains of inference are simply the converse of the chains of physical causality by which distant events are connected to the nerve-messages. If the scheme of transmission of these messages through the external world is not deterministic then the scheme of inference as to their source cannot be deterministic, and our epistemology has been based on an impossible ideal. In that case our attitude to the whole scheme of natural knowledge must be profoundly modified.
These reasons will be considered at length, but it is convenient to state here our answers to them in equally summary form.
(1) In recent times some of the greatest triumphs of physical prediction have been furnished by admittedly statistical laws which do not rest on a basis of causality. Moreover the great laws hitherto accepted as causal appear on minuter examination to be of statistical character.
(2) Whether or not there is a causal scheme at the base of atomic phenomena, modern atomic theory is not now attempting to find it; and it is making rapid progress because it no longer sets this up as a practical aim. We are in the position of holding an epistemological theory of natural knowledge which does not correspond to actual aim of current scientific investigation.
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