Are some phenomena UNCAUSED?
Quantum Mechanics, Randomness, Uncertainty
Maybe this too has been beaten to death somewhere and has been totally answered. But I'm too lazy to do the 2- or 3-hour search to find it, so:
There are some claims, supposedly from Quantum Mechanics physicists, that certain observable events at the sub-atomic level happen without being caused by anything. Whenever I hear someone say this, they fail to explain what is special about these sub-atomic events that they would be different than the normal "macro" events we see happening around us in our normal experience and which are all caused by something (whether we know the cause or not). Here's one statement of this:
Quantum mechanics defies causal order, experiment confirms
11 Sep 2018
Hamish Johnston
An experiment has confirmed that quantum mechanics allows events to occur with no definite causal order. The work has been carried out by
Jacqui Romero,
Fabio Costa and colleagues at the University of Queensland in Australia, who say that gaining a better understanding of this indefinite causal order could offer a route towards a theory that combines Einstein’s general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics
In classical physics – and everyday life – there is a strict causal relationship between consecutive events. If a second event (
B) happens after a first event (
A), for example, then
B cannot affect the outcome of
A. This relationship, however, breaks down in quantum mechanics because the temporal spread of a particles’s wave function can be greater than the separation in time between
A and
B. This means that the causal order of
A and
B cannot be always be distinguished by a quantum particle such as a photon.
This seems to mean that the researchers are unable to distinguish between A and B. So, in order to identify the "B" (effect) they must distinguish it from the "A" (cause). I.e., they can't identify the "separation" of the two, and the "causal order" (earlier vs. later?) or time sequence cannot be identified.
If that's the meaning, then why can't they just say it's impossible (with present technology) to identify the cause, or distinguish A from B, and so they just cannot determine the cause? That's not the same as saying there is no cause. It's just saying there's one more phenomenon in the universe which cannot be explained. -- or, the cause of it cannot be determined.
In their experiment, Romero, Costa and colleagues created a “quantum switch”, in which photons can take two paths. One path involves being subjected to operation
A before operation
B, while in the other path
B occurs before
A. The order in which the operations are performed is determined by the initial polarization of the photon as it enters the switch.
The experiment involves using a polarizing beam splitter, which sends photons of different polarizations along different paths. The photon source is diagonally polarized with respect to the beam splitter, which means that there is a 50% chance that a photon will take either route.
Out of order
The two paths are then recombined, and the polarization of the photons are measured. The operations
A and
B are designed such that the order in which they are applied to the photons affects the polarization of the output photons – if the system has definite causality.
The team did the experiment using several different types of operation for
A and
B and in all cases they found that the measured polarization of the output photons was consistent with their being no definite causal order between when
A and
B was applied. Indeed, the measurements backed indefinite causal order to a whopping statistical significance of 18σ – well beyond the 5σ threshold that is considered a discovery in physics.
So, maybe they discovered something about the behavior of these photons, how they behave unpredictably when they are sent along these different paths. The "indefinite causal order" is itself just another phenomenon they observed and for which they don't know the cause. What has happened is that something caused them to behave in this seemingly random fashion which the observers cannot explain. With further research, over another 100 years or so, maybe some new results will be observed which will answer the question of what caused this.
As well as making an experimental connection between relativity and quantum mechanics, the researchers point out that their quantum switch could find use in quantum technologies. “This is just a first proof of principle, but on a larger scale indefinite causal order can have real practical applications, like making computers more efficient or improving communication,” says Costa.
Saying this itself is really an admission that something caused the "randomness" phenomenon that they have discovered. By reproducing this randomness in certain ways, it can be put to some practical use, by applying this "indefinite causal order" to a practical need and using it to produce desirable outcomes. How can any such outcome as this be a claim that something happened without being caused? Obviously this is just one more example of cause-and-effect where some kind of causing factors are determined, even though others are not determined. It doesn't mean that anything uncaused happened, but only that some events which cannot be explained can still be put to use, by causing them to happen in a way that they can be applied to a practical need. And yet at the same time these events have an unexplained element to them which is not understood.
Do scientists really understand how electrons function? or why they behave as they do? Maybe some actually understand it, and yet many technicians don't understand it while also they put the electrons to use in cables or devices, so we can see how many unexplained phenomena can be put to practical use, because it's possible to produce those phenomena in some way even though their cause is not known.
The research is described in
Physical Review Letters.
I suppose there's a better presentation of the theory than this one. But I'm skeptical that any of the explainers have really proved that there are some phenomena they observed which have no cause.
Am I wrong and no one has ever said such a thing (something happens without having any cause)? Did I misinterpret this "Uncertainty Principle" or "Randomness" claim? Maybe everyone does agree that every observable event does have a cause. And the "randomness" or "uncertainty" principle has never contradicted the traditional premise of cause-and-effect. But I could swear I've heard them claim that modern "quantum" theory has come up with proof that there are some uncaused events at the subatomic level. I.e., that something has been observed which behaved in such a way that could not have been caused by anything.
The theory (something happens without being caused) is said to be proved by some kind of empirical experimentation, and jargon like "randomness" and "uncertainty principle" etc. is tossed around. But jargon is not sufficient to prove it. It's a "big universe" -- there are obviously an infinite array of events, big and small, which are not explained and may never be explained, and when such a thing is encountered, one can easily just throw up their hands and proclaim: this is one of those "random" events which has no cause.
Why? How do they know it has no cause, however finite and miniscule and subatomic it may be?
The only excuse for putting these subatomic events into such a special category is the claim that there is no way to analyze these events, or observe them and measure them, without distorting their behavior in some way -- because the observation or measurement per se changes the behavior, so that we can never know how they would behave if we had not interfered with them by doing our observing and measuring.
This seems to be the only reason for claiming that such phenomena have no cause, and cannot have ever been caused by anything.
They can't seem to explain it beyond this. They can't explain how they know there's no cause, and why it's not just another case of a phenomenon for which they don't know the cause.
They are refuted by either of 2 possibilities: 1) possibly there are some events for which it is impossible to determine the cause, ever, or 2) there are events for which they cannot determine the cause at this time, without better methods of observation and measurement, but for which later it will be possible to determine the cause.
There seems to be an ideologically-based impulse for saying there is no cause, in these cases, rather than a science-based principle. How can anyone but an ideologue declare that a certain event can't have a cause?
We all assume any event we see was caused by something. We can't live our lives without this premise. It falls into the category Immanuel Kant labeled as an "a priori" empirical truth, like space and time are empirical truths we know and assume all the time and without which we cannot live or act, or think anything or do anything. Without these truths we know, it's even impossible for us to say anything or think anything about science or facts or the world or existence. To even say "there is" or "there is not" a cause is impossible without assuming the basic empirical truths, including the truth that there is a cause for every phenomenon, however ignorant of it we are.
