Week 2 Reflections on Causality

The first thing that comes to mind on this topic is Chinese Medicine. In Classical Chinese Medicine, for instance, prolonged grief, and Lung weakness are related. But it is not always clear if one preceded the other. Nor is it important because they are thought to have a relationship of inter-dependency rather than cause and effect. In other words, prolonged grief may weaken the strength of the Lungs OR a prolonged Lung weakness may create a vulnerability to prolonged grief (when it arises). Whereas in Western medicine, there is always a specific cause for a specific disease.

I’m getting that, up until now causality was thought of as the basis for all events. It also is thought of as the basis for human thought and reasoning. Beginning as early as infancy, humans learn to associate their own behavior with an effect on someone else’s. We learn that when we cry, someone comes to feed us. And who’s been around babies who hasn’t played the “I drop it and the grown up exclaims oops!! and picks it up” game?! Causality may be the fundamental building block of human consciousness or at least the ‘rational’ mind. “If THIS; then THIS.” Even other animals seem to have some understanding of the relationship of their own actions to the world around them. There is so much we can predict based on the fundamental attributes of causality; the weather, animals and plants behavior, the course of an illness. It is hard to even conceive of anything else.

But I think that what we’re learning is that in the quantum world (which we, of course are part of), that level of predictability does not exist. At least, it doesn’t exist all the time. Some quantum behavior must be at least somewhat predictable since we employ knowledge of electrons to create transistors and lasers. I guess it’s like taking a shower; we can count on the water falling on our heads but not the landing point of every single drop. In the basic human experience causality feels so relevant and true. But apparently, at the subatomic level it is not so relevant and true, or maybe we just haven’t identified the pattern of causality at that level yet.

I am intrigued by the idea that the act of observing affects the outcome; that our experience of the event is intrinsically bound together with the event itself; and that the event would play out differently if we were not ‘observing’ it. The roots of the word observe mean, “to watch over and keep safe” and “to protect, to attend to in practice, to keep, follow”. When I think of protecting; watching over and keeping something safe, I do not think at all of a passive and objective person but a more active participant who has a stake in the outcome.

I think that shifting our understanding, even paradigm, of the nature of events in the world around and in us, to perhaps even let go of the vocabulary of cause, may help our species to evolve. The intellectual and cognitive dependency on causality represents a deep desire to control the world around us. I think even an effort to understand is a version of intellectual control. Maybe, if we can begin to open our minds to the possibility outside of causality we can experience a great leap in awareness of the truth of our Universe.