Despite the fact that the world is not like it at all, people prefer to live in a deterministic reality of fixed objects where clock time governs and events are predictable. Accordingly, our systems of logic – grammars of subject, object, and verb – assign fixed names and times for things and events.
My proper name refers to me as a particular individual distinct from all other individuals, even all the others with the same name. I’m the one born on a particular date, in a particular place, at a particular time; it’s on my birth certificate. For all I know, however, there may well be another who was born in the same city, in the same hospital, on the same day, at the same time who was given the same name. Even the so-called facts of who I am may be indeterminate.
Is who I am today the same person I was when I was born? My body is not at all the same. Cell turnover roughly every seven years means that the specific elements of my physical self have changed at least ten times. My mind’s identity, the “who” I think I am, is the most stable part of me, and even that’s not entirely fixed if my brain gets scrambled.
This notion of identity is connected to a collection of attributes, but attributes alone are not enough to be certain about who I am. Among those attributes are personal history, how things I’ve done and where I’ve been distinguish me from anyone else. Thus the logical question: is identity simply referencing what we’ve accomplished and where we’ve been?
Our logic prefers the imposition of an orderly universe, but the universe is anything but orderly and the deeper we look, the more vague things become. This is the mystery of the quantum realm, where the tiniest “objects” cease to have fixed physical attributes at all and vaguely appear to be energy filled space. Given quantum reality, does any part of “me” actually exist? Is there a logic of vagueness?
These questions vexed no less than Albert Einstein, a determinist despite the uncertainty created by his Theory of Relativity. His contemporary Henri Bergson, himself a respected theoretician, embraced vagueness and settled more comfortably into the ceaseless uncertainty of becoming; accordingly, as quantum theory became more widely accepted, so too the views of Bergson.
Theoreticians continue to try to develop a logic of vagueness, one that unifies the dissonance between classical physics and quantum theory. At quantum scale, and everything is built upon that, reality behaves as either particles and waves depending upon the orientation of the observer, a hallmark of vagueness. And that each of us exist at that tiniest of scales raises questions about the true nature of being, or as Bergson would say, of becoming.
Of course, it’s entirely possible to live an entire life and pay no attention to such matters. And yet, the vagueness of reality is undeniable and still defies explanation. We rely on the power of reason and science to solve such mysteries, but it may be that at the heart of vagueness is yet more vagueness, and that no firm solution is possible.
Thus it is we muddle through life, forming attachments, accumulating possessions, holding opinions, pursuing praise, avoiding pain, paying bills, and making do, assuming tomorrow will be much the same as today. And it will be, until it’s not.
Be First to Comment