RE: How flexible is the principle of causality?
March 17, 2014 at 10:01 am
(This post was last modified: March 17, 2014 at 10:07 am by Mudhammam.)
(March 17, 2014 at 9:57 am)Alex K Wrote:Basically, to borrow from Wikipedia, "in classical (Newtonian) mechanics a cause may be represented by a force acting on a body, and an effect by the acceleration which follows as quantitatively explained by Newton's second law." I always took causality to be a fundamental principle, or rather the foundation of classical physics...no?(March 17, 2014 at 9:46 am)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: I suppose this level of randomness would be something on the quantum level but sure, we could never really measure it because unless I'm incorrect, that would violate the uncertainty principle.I could be wrong, but I think when you actually know the hidden variables, you are not limited by the uncertainty principle any more. The uncertainty principle is then just a statement what the expected variation in results will be for arbitrary random choices of the hidden variables.
Quote:I guess my question from there would be, if macroscopic objects behave differently at the microscopic scale, at some point in the past (the Big Bang?), was the future entirely undetermined by the random processes of quantum...fluctuations?I think that's a fair statement, if it is random
Quote:Where does that leave us in terms of the law of causality in Newtonian physics though? Did that law in nature itself come about through "undetermined" means?
What is the law of causality in Newtonian physics?
Also, reverting back to my original question...once the casual chain began and the elements were forged in the first stars...how much "randomness" (as we meant on the quantum level) could exist in the behavior of matter then? Or was it that once the ball got rolling, chemical reactions were just gon'a "do what they do?"