Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

system in which complex structures developed from simpler forms. Whereas in biologyevolution meant a movement toward increasing order and complexity, in physics(thermodynamics) it came to mean just the opposite - a movement toward increasingdisorder. This grim picture of cosmic evolution is in sharp contrast to the ideas of biologistsand the emergence of evolution in physics thus brought to light a limitation of theNewtonian theory. The mechanistic conception of the universe as a system of billiard balls inrandom motion is far too simplistic to deal with the evolution of life 80 . Relativity theory andatomic physics shattered all the principal concepts of the Newtonian world view: the notionof absolute space and time, the elementary solid particles, the strictly causal nature ofphysical phenomena, and the ideal of an objective description of nature 81 . The philosophicalimplication of the theory was that time can change and depends on the circumstances, andthe position of the observer is essential for the measurement of time, a theme that was tobecome one of the characteristics of the new physics of the first three decades of the 20 thCentury. The universe is experienced as a dynamic inseparable whole, which always includesthe observer in an essential way, as Capra noted 82 .Quantum theory delivered the third blow to the Newtonian worldview. Whererelativity theory is valid on the very large cosmological scale and replaces Newtonian physics,in the realm of elementary particles, atoms, and molecules, quantum theory replaces classicalphysics 83 . Ever since Newton physicists had believed that all physical phenomena could bereduced to the properties of hard and solid material particles. Quantum theory forces themto accept the fact that the solid material objects of classical physics dissolve at the subatomiclevel into wavelike patterns of probabilities. There is wave-particle duality 84 . These patterns,moreover, do not represent probabilities of things, but rather probabilities ofinterconnections. The subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities but can beunderstood only as interconnections, or correlations, among various processes ofobservation and measurement. In other words, subatomic particles are not things butinterconnections among things. Shifting the attention from macroscopic objects to atomsand subatomic particles, nature does not show us any isolated building blocks, but ratherappears as a complex web of relationships among the various parts of a unified whole. Theserelationships are expressed in quantum theory in probabilities, which are determined by thedynamics of the whole system. Whereas in classical mechanics the properties and behavior ofthe parts determine those of the whole, the situation is reversed in quantum mechanics. It isthe whole that determines the parts.The duality feature also led Werner Heisenberg in 1927 to formulate his famous“uncertainty (or indeterminacy) principle”, which Boyd incorporated in Destruction andCreation and A New Conception for Air-to-Air Combat, and referred to in most otherpresentations. Heisenberg noted that it is possible to determine the coordinate of asubatomic particle, but the moment we do so, the momentum of the particle will acquire anarbitrary value, and vise versa. We can measure coordinates or movements, but not both. Itmeant that the more precisely we know the measured value of one quantity, the greater the80 Capra (1982), p.72-74.81 Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (Shambala, Boston, Mass.,1975), pp.61-62.82 Ibid, p.81 (note that this work was on Boyd's early reading lists).83 Peter Coveney & Roger Highfield, The Arrow of Time (Flamingo, London, 1991), p.107.84 Ibid, p.114. This book gives a very detailed yet accessible account of developments in physics in thepast century. For quantum mechanics, and a concise discussion of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle,see chapter 4. Likewise, Prigogine and Stengers give a historical overview of the scientificdevelopments of the past century leading up to complexity theory in the 1980’s. They focus more onthe second law of thermodynamics.97