The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-08-18
The Philosophy of Uncertainty

Nobel Prizeman Arthur H. Comp
ton Of the University Of Chicago
recently unbosomed himself on the
timeworn subject of morality" and
science. DR.. Compton held that free
will had been restored to man by
the latest developments in physics
which seem to indicate that natural
phenomena do not obey exact"
scientific laws. If a physicist can
not predict a physical event, but can
speak only Of the chance of its &C.
currence, it follows, according to DR..
Compton, that society is not subject
to social and economic laws. Chance
replaces scientific law as the key to
the social world and physical uni
verse.
Now Dr. Compton is not alone in
his belief that scientific laws are
controlled by accident. The same
view is widely held among physicists
and is percolating down to biologists
and other scientists. How did the
idea that chance rules the universe
displsce the concepts of scientific
law and scientific determination
upon which science has been based,
at least in the minds of bourgeois
scientists?
The principle Of uncertainty was
developed by Professor erne|
Heisenberg. He claimed that in
physical measurement whatever is
used to measure an object somehow
changes 1t, so that actually one can
never hope to observe any object at
any particular position as it really
is before it is measured or observed.
For example, whatever instruments
we use to measure the speed of a
bullet, slow or deviate the bullet by
an amount that cannot be exactly
determined.
At first the principle of uncer-
tainty was applied only to atomic
phenomena. But Professor Niels
Bohr extended Heisenberg's principle
to include all natural and social
(See Atomic Theory and
the Description of Nature, by Niels
Bohr. The Macmillan Company
Such step was inevitable. Once
you begin by asserting that physical
are ruled by chance and
that they are subjective in char
acter, you must logically conclude
that all things in nature and society
happen, not according to scientific
law, but according to pure chance"
OUCH a position leaves the field |
y open to idealists and mystics of
every variety. For if you destroy the
basic criterion Of science-the &C
curate description and accurate pre-
diction of events, you destroy the
possibility Of science giving us
correct picture of the objective |
world. And If we cannot ever really
know the world, then obviously |
Communism cannot change the |
world according to scientific plan.
Science is then but one of innumer-
able ways of looking at the world,
and must give way to religion.
which is not uncertain since it is
based on the omniscience of God.
Of course. the idea that electrons
have free will and that they can
jump where and when they like Ito
cite Eddington's example) is errone-
GUS. In sense it is a deliberate
error on the. part Of the idealistic |
scientists, since the facts of science
show that the universe is not a
chaos ruled over by God, but that
its dialectic movements follow the
laws Of deterministic science. In
the New Masses of July 81 the writer
pointed out certain logical and lin
guistic errors in the principle of I'M
certainty. 1t may be useful to de-
velop another line of attack here.
Physicists found that they could |
not exactly predict" the occurrence
of certain atomic phenomena. This