The Encyclopedia of Mind, Magic & Mysteries [antikvár]

The E X cr c lo p e d ! a oe Al i .y i>, Magic a n I5 MyxteriesNTI11/ e always find something, eh, Didi, to give us \ \the impression that we exist?"Samuel lieckettA CENTURY OR SO AGO it was believed by tlic majority of educated Europeans and Nortii Americans tiiat tlie scientists, matliematicians, theoreticians, and technologists had come to understand the nature of the physical world, and that they were in the process of mastering it. Today, the foundations of that confident belief have been shaiien to the very roots.Ignorance to Truth ^ Classical physics, formulated by Isaac Newton some two centuries earlier, seemed to explain every type of dynamic physical system, from those involving atoms and molecules, to those concerned with planets and comets. Mysticism, magic, and belief in the supernatural were beginning to be looked upon as odd relics of a pre-scientifie age, destined to be intellectually rejected as quaint hangovers from the past by all sensible people.The history of humanity, it was claimed, was as an evolutionary progression from ignorance to truth, from darkness to light, from the superstitious barbarism that had inspired the building of Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt, to the new technology that had created the steam engine and the armoured warship.Absurd Religions -c-There were, so it was thought, many regrettable hangovers from the past. Primitive peoples like, for example, the North- and South-American Indians and the Australian aborigines, each with their shamans and witchdoctors; or theossified culture of the great Chinese Empire, with its "completely absurd mystical religions such as Buddhism, and its "ridiculous" traditional therapies, like acupuncture and moxibustion.Such relics, however, were generally held to be doomed to eventual extinction - the Chinese, Indians, and aborigines, would soon recognize the superiority of western technology and philosophy, and would abandon their ancestors' futile superstitions.God Playing Dice By 1940, the confidence of the late-nineteenth century had turned to disillusion. Newtonian physics had, save for certain purposes, completely broken down. Ail of its supposed certainties had vanished amidst a welter of argument and confusion.The infinite, three-dimensional space of Euclidean geometry had given place to Albert Einstein's concept of space-time as a single continuum; Newton's concept of absolute motion had been abandoned in favour of the theory of relativity and its many paradoxes; and at the level of subatomic particles, the hand of chance was shown to operate in a way that has since been described as "God playing dice".Shattered Universe The ordered universe of Newton's theories of mechanics fell apart - it was seen to be, at the very best, true only on a partial, local level. No longer did any reputable physicist or theorist assert that if a person could ascertain the precise position and state of motion of every particle of matter in the universe, then he or she could, in theory, accurately predict the future of the universe. This so-called "crisis in physics" that had suddenly become apparent, did not, as one might imagine, cause an incredible furore; it was, in fact, only of any interest to a small minority of people.