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Also by F. David Peat
Blackfoot Physics: A Journey into the Native American Universe
Seven Life Lessons of Chaos: Timeless Wisdom from the Science of Change (with
John Briggs)
The Blackwinged Night: Creativity in Nature and Mind
Science, Order, and Creativity (with David Bohm)
Infinite Potential: The Life and Times of David Bohm
In Search of Nikola Tesla
Who's Afraid of Schrodinger's Cat? An A-to-Z Guide to All the New Science Ideas
You Need to Keep Up with the New Thinking (with Ian Marshall and Danah
Zohar)
Glimpsing Reality: Ideas in Physics and the Link to Biology (edited, with Paul
Buckley)
The Philosopher's Stone: Chaos, Synchronicity, and the Hidden Order of the World
Quantum Implications: Essays in Honour of David Bohm (edited, with Basil Hiley)
Einstein's Moon: Bell's Theorem and the Curious Quest for Quantum Reality
Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything
Turbulent Mirror: An Illustrated Guide to Chaos Theory and the Science of
Wholeness (with John Briggs)
Cold Fusion: The Making of a Scientific Controversy
Artificial Intelligence: How Machines Think
Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind
Looking Glass Universe: The Emerging Science of Wholeness (with John Briggs)
The Armchair Guide to Murder and Detection
The Nuclear Book
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The Story of Science and Fleas
in the Twentieth Century
F. DAVID PEAT
JOSEPH HENRY PRESS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
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Joseph Henry Press · 2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W. · Washington, D.C. 20418
The Toseph Henry Press, an imprint of the National Academy Press, was created
with the goal of making books on science, technology, and health more widely
available to professionals and the public. Toseph Henry was one of the founders
of the National Academy of Sciences and a leader in early American science.
Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this
volume are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
National Academy of Sciences or its affiliated institutions.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Peat, F. David,1938-
From certainty to uncertainty: the story of science and ideas in the
twentieth century / F. David Peat.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-309-07641-2 (hard)
1. Physics Philosophy.2. Certainty.3. Chaotic behaviorin
systems.4. Physics History 20th century. I. Title: Story of science
and ideas in the twentieth century. II. Title.
QC6 .P33 2002
530'.09'04 dc21
2002001482
Cover art: Diego Rodriguez Velazquez, Las Meninas (detail), copyright Erich
Lessing/Art Resource, NY (left side); Michele de la Menardiere, Homage to Las
Meninas (right side).
Copyright 2002 by F. David Peat. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
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For Alessandro
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CPreface
1 Quantum Uncertainty
2 On Incompleteness
3 From Object to Process
4 Language
The End of Representation
6 From Clockwork to Chaos
Re-envisioning the Planet
8 Pausing the Cosmos
Postscript
Appendix: Go(lel's Theorem
In(lex
TC?
. .
V11
1X
1
27
52
71
90
115
154
187
215
217
223
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Que sais-je? (What do I know?) Montaigne
~ ~ he first year of a new century
always appears auspicious. The year 1900 was no exception. Americans
welcomed it in with the three Ps: Peace, Prosperity, and Progress. It was
the culmination of many outstanding achievements and looked for-
ward, with great confidence, to a century of continued progress. The
twentieth century would be an age of knowledge and certainty. Ironi-
cally it ended in uncertainty, ambiguity, and doubt. This book is the
story of that change and of a major transformation in human think-
ing. It also argues that, while our new millennium may no longer offer
certainty, it does hold a new potential for growth, change, discovery,
and creativity in all walks of life.
On April 27, 1900, Lor(1 Kelvin, the eminent physicist and presi-
dent of Britain's Royal Society, addressed the Royal Institution, point-
ing out "the beauty and clearness of the (1ynamical theory." Finally
Newton's physics had been exten(le(1 to embrace all of physics, inclu(l-
ing both heat and light. In essence, everything that could be known
was, in principle at least, aIrea(ly known. The president could look
ahead to a new century with total conviction. Newton's theory of
1X
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x ~ Preface
motion had been confirmed by generations of scientists, and it ex-
plained everything from the orbits of the planets to the times of the
tides, the fall of an apple, and the path of a projectile. What's more,
during the preceding decades James Clerk Maxwell had established a
definitive theory of light. Taken together, Newton's and Maxwell's two
theories appeared to be capable of explaining every phenomenon in
the entire physical universe.
Yet the cusp of the twentieth century presents us with an irony.
1900 was a year of great stability and confidence. It saw the consolida-
tion and summing up of many triumphs in science, technology, engi-
neering, economics, and diplomacy. As Senator Chauncey Depew of
New York put it, "There is not a man here who does not fee] 400 per-
cent bigger in 1900 than he slid in 1896, bigger intellectually, bigger
hopefully, bigger patriotically," while the Reverend Newell Dwight
Hillis cIaimed,"Laws are becoming more just, rules more humane;
music is becoming sweeter and books wiser." Yet, at that very moment
other thinkers, inventors, scientists, artists, and dreamers, including
Max Planck, Henri Poincare, Thomas Edison, Guglielmo Marconi,
Nikola Tesla, the Wright brothers, Bertrand Russell, Paul Cezanne,
Pablo Picasso, Marce] Proust, Sigmund Freud, Henry Ford, and
Herman Hoherith were conceiving of ideas and inventions that were
to transform the entire globe.
1900 was the year in which flash photography was invented and
speech was first transmitted by radio. Arthur Evans discovered evi-
dence of a Minoan culture and the United States backed its paper cur-
rency with gold. Once the Gold Standard had been adopted, was there
anything that could stand in the way of a greater (1egree of confidence
in the future of their world?
1900 also represents the culmination of a period of rapid discov-
ery. In the two previous years the Curies had (liscovere(1 ra(lium and
I. I. Thomson the electron. Von Lin(le had liquefied air and Aspirin had
been invented. Edison's Vitascope together with the magnetic record-
ing of sound heralded the age of the movies.
Thanks to Nikola Tesla's inventions in alternating current, the city
of Buffalo was receiving electrical power generated by Niagara Falls.
Count van Zeppelin constructed an airship, the Paris Metro opened,
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Preface ~ xi
and London saw its first motorbus. By 1902, the transmission of data
by telephone and telegraph was already well established, and the first
faxed photographs were being transmitted.
1900 also saw a link between Britain's Trades Union Congress and
the Independent Labour Party, a move that would eventually lead to
the establishment of the welfare state. With such a dream of social im-
provement people seemed justified in believing that the future would
provide better housing, education, and health services. Homelessness
would be a thing of the past and, while those thrown out of work would
need to tighten their belts a little, they would be supported by the wel-
fare state and would no longer face suffering and hardship.
Europe also experienced a great sense of stability in 1900. Queen
Victoria, who had ruled since 1837, was still on the throne. She had
become known as "the Grandmother of Europe," since her grandchil-
dren were now part of the European monarchy. Indeed all of the Euro-
pean kings and queens, as well as the Russian royal family, were a part
of a single international family presided over byVictoria. It was for this
reason, diplomats believed, there would never be a war within Europe.
On May 18,1899, at the prompting of Czar Nicholas II's minister
of foreign affairs, 26 nations met at The Hague for the worId's first
peace conference. There they established an International Court to ar-
bitrate in disputes between nations. The conference outlawed poison
gases, dum~um bullets, and the discharge of bombs from balloons.
Wars and international conflicts would be things of the past. The world
itself was moving toward a new golden age in which science and tech-
nology would be put to the service of humanity and world peace
Yet when people look to a golden future they should not forget the
role of hubris. Often our predictions return to haunt us. It is particu-
larly ironic that in this same year, 1900, ideas and approaches began to
surface that were to transform our world, our society, and ourselves in
ra(lical and unpre(lictable ways.
What were those tiny seeds that were destined to blossom in such
unexpected directions? In 1900 Max Planck published his first paper
on the quantum, and young Albert Einstein graduated from the Zurich
Polytechnic Academy. A year later Werner Heisenberg was born. These
three physicists would create the great revolutions of modern science.
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xii ~ Preface
In 1900 Henri Poincare was working on an abstruse technical di~-
culty involving Newtonian mechanics. Over half a century later this
would explode into chaos theory. Astronomers were looking forward
to the opening of the great telescopes at Mount Wilson in 1904 and, in
the decades that followed, Edwin Hubble would use these instruments
to discover that the universe was far vaster than ever believed and,
moreover, that it was continually expanding.
In 1900 biologists rediscovered the work of an obscure mid nine-
teenth century monk, Gregor Mendel. Ignored by the scientific com-
munity in his own (lay, Men(lel had examine(1 the way physical charac-
teristics are inherited when different varieties of garden peas are
crossed. Who would have guessed that exactly a century after this re-
discovery of the basis of genetic inheritance, the completion of the
Human Genome Project would be announced?
This same year, 1900, saw the publication of Sigmund Freud's In-
terpretation of Dreams. Much more rational than a Victorian dream
book, which typically flirted with (1ivination and the occult, it (lemon-
strated that dreams are "the royal road to the unconscious" and, in
turn, that our waking lives are ruled by the irrationality of the uncon-
scious. That unconscious had a potential for violence and human irra-
tionality that was to be powerfully demonstrated again and again dur-
ing the twentieth century.
At the end of the nineteenth century Percival Lowell used his for-
tune to establish his own observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona, with the
aim of discovering life on Mars. In 1900 H. G. Wells, inspired by these
ideas, published War of the Worlds, with its image of the mass destruc-
tion of the human race. Ironically the real possibility of global destruc-
tion in the twentieth century did not arise from little green men from
Mars but from human-ma(le weapons of mass (lestruction.
1900 was the year when the young philosopher Bertrand Russell
heard Giuseppe Peano speak at a conference in Paris. The lecture so
inspired Russell that he devoted his life's work to the discovery of cer-
tainty in mathematics and philosophy. How this mathematical Holy
Grail itself was eventually subverted forms the core of Chapter 2.
In 1900, inspired by the writings of John Ruskin, Marce] Proust
visited Venice. He abandoned the novel on which he had been working
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Preface ~ xiii
and, determined to seek some new way of expressing "man's" confron-
tation with eternity, he embarked on a master plan that was to termi-
nate in one of the major literary works of the twentieth century. It was
also the year that the 18-year-old James Joyce, after having his first
article published, decided to become a full-time writer. In this same
year Picasso had his first exhibition and made a trip to Paris, an event
that was to have a profound effect on art in the twentieth century. 1900
was also the year in which Paul Cezanne was working on his famous
studies of Montagne Sainte-Victoire. The works he produced there had
a revolutionary effect on painting and produced yet another form of
doubt as he questioned the certainty of what he was seeing.
In the previous year Henry Ford had formed the Detroit Motor
Company, which would produce the famous Model T. a car that trans-
formed American society. Add to this Ford's discovery of mass produc-
tion through the assembly line and one understands in part why, when
young Henry left his father's farm, only a quarter of Americans lived in
a city, yet, when he died, well over half of them were city dwellers. In
1900 there were 8,000 automobiles in the United States and 150 miles
of paved road. Today the number of cars in the United States is close to
100 million.
A few years earlier, in 1896, Herman Hollerith had created the
Tabulating Machine Company to speed up the processing of data us-
ing a system of punched car(ls. In 1911 the company's name changed
to International Business Machines. The radio vacuum tube had been
invented (in 1904), and so both the physical components and the busi-
ness infrastructure were already in place for the creation of the com-
puter revolution.
In the same year as the creation of Hollerith's Tabulating Machine
Company, Henri Becquere] discovered the radioactivity of uranium. A
few decades later, while studying Becquerel's phenomenon, the Ger-
man scientist Otto Hahn realized that the atom could be split. When
knowle(lge of this process reached the United States, colleagues per-
suaded Einstein to write a letter to President Roosevelt recommending
the buil(ling of an atomic bomb, out of the fear that Nazi scientists
would (lo so first. And so was born the atomic age, and with it the
possibility of the annihilation of all life on earth.
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xiv ~ Preface
While the twentieth century began with confident certainty it
ended in unsettling uncertainty. Never again will we have the same
degree of pride in our knowledge. In our infatuation with science and
technology we overestimated our ability to manipulate and control the
world around us. We forgot the power of the mind's irrational im-
puIses. We were too proud in our intellectual achievements, too confi-
dent in our abilities, too convinced that humans would stride across
the world like gods.
Today we are wiser and more cautious. We are suspicious of great
plans and global promises. We view with caution the sweeping propos-
als of experts and politicians. We savor unbounded optimism with a
generous pinch of salt.
Above all we want a better world for ourselves, our children, and
our children's children. We have learned that ordinary people can have
a voice. We will not put our lives blindly into the hands of politicians
and institutions. We demand to be heard and we know we can be effec-
tive.
Now let us return in more detail to the twentieth century and dis-
cover the various ways in which certainty dissolved into uncertainty.
Each chapter that follows tells us something about uncertainty in the
worlds of art, science, economics, society, and the environment. Each
adds another layer to those increasingly complex questions: Who am I?
What (lo I know? What (lees it mean to be human?
FDP
Pari, Italy
2002
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