QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

models thus created, assume an ever-increasing role in shaping the world’s processes. 861
When humans become conscious of some process or law in nature and use this knowledge to
their advantage they can, in a specific sense, free themselves from the ”power” of natural
processes. Without this kind of understanding, the progress of phenomena in reality is, from the
human viewpoint, totally determined by external factors. Our fundamental models and beliefs
concerning reality are immensely influential. They guide our actions and are able to have an
effect on our environment. The contents of our minds may in a way ”materialise” in the external
world even though they naturally carry greater significance for our invisible internal reality. As a
major part of reality is not located at the perceivable material level, it is as if we are forced from
inside, based on our gradually increasing knowledge and understanding, to learn step by step to
control the overall development of this complex whole which contains so many possibilities.
While, within the modern era, the world was considered to be a machine, robotics and
automation have developed at dizzying speed, but questions of the meaning or purpose of life are
usually shuffled aside. If we were to believe that inside, humans belong to the wholeness of
nature, it might signify a new type of responsibility. We would not then perhaps wish to control
and exploit the wholeness of nature from the outside as if it were nothing more than a machine.
As the influence exerted by humans grows and the volume of our activity increases, it is ever
more important to remember that the models of reality we create do not, as such, directly
correspond to reality. Maps and the landscape they portray are different things. Reality is not
exhausted by the models we create, in our relationship with it we are forced to operate in the
zone of uncertainty. Reality may be a great deal richer than we presume. It is certainly not a
lifeless clockwork mechanism, independent of our actions, it reacts to human activity. In
selecting our courses of action and making value judgements concerning our models and the
consequences and effect of our activity, pure logic is not sufficient, we must employ the wisdom
and ethical powers that we possess. The formation of reality and our future circumstances
depends on the values that we adopt and exercise.
Profound creativity and understanding are possibilities open to humans, even though the unique
incidents which occur in specific circumstances and contexts are unlikely to ever be predicted
and modelled from an external viewpoint. Our human abilities, our conscious understanding, our
will and our feelings are elements of reality which should not be forgotten. They are the
861 We can naturally only actualise possibilities that are allowed by natural laws.
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