QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

oom for their separate existence in the all-embracing picture of the cosmos. 714
In a specific sense, Everett preserved the classical physics idea of an external objective observer
capable of describing the whole world from a position outside it. However, in this model the
world also seems to change drastically as a result of human activity. As a consequence of
different choices of measurement arrangemants, the world is divided into different kind of
branches even if an observer who is trapped in one world cannot, in principle, obtain any
knowledge about other branches or even make predictions about the future of the world in which
they are present. If a Laplacian demon, somehow positioned outside all worlds, would be capable
of viewing a real super-reality in which all possibilities are realised and at the same time
differentiated into their own universes, it could not calculate their future development if human
activity was not also completely predictable in advance.
Even though the many-worlds interpreters and hidden-variable interpreters attempted, in
principle, to preserve classical determinism and predictability, this is, from the human point of
view, pointless, since humans cannot anyway know all branches of the universe or exact starting
values for the hidden variables. In these attempts, people are usually placed within a completelydeterministic
world which they cannot however know and whose future development they are
unable to predict. The world is more or less a machine and man becomes its deterministic object.
Also, the presumption made by London and Bauer about consciousness collapsing the wave
function neither restored free will to humans or returned the situation to one of classical
predictability. Even if they are conscious, people do not obtain the measurement values they
require, and the use of consciousness in this connection is just as good an explanation as anima
mundi, an archetype or God who can also be presumed to be secretly selecting the results that
they desire.
Bohr stressed the fact that humans do not have a completely external view-point from which they
could view the world ”as it is”. According to him, quantum descriptions could not be
incorporated into the classical world without leaving some residuals. Both Bohm and Everett
experienced problems in employing classical and objective ideals when trying to present a clear
ontological model of a world actively influenced by man. Clearly, the totality of human activity
and free choices cannot be included an ontological portrayal of the world given from an external
viewpoint, at least as long as such a world is assumed to be essentially classical. This is however
714 Polkinghorne 1990, 67. Actually, in connection with many worlds, one should not speak about measurements
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