Knowledge and Reality

From the time we first open our eyes as infants, we are obsessed with the vital question of, "What's out there?" After collecting a certain degree of often bewildering information on this subject, some of us become aware of the innate limitations of this venture. Ultimately, our only device is the human brain's peculiar organization of human sensations. Who says we can trust it? We begin to question our very assumptions: Is there really anything out there? And if so, can it really be defined by the human mind?

For many centuries, science strongly relied on a positive answer to both those questions. In this passing century, we have increasing evidence that we have been somewhat presumptuous. To the question, "Is there anything out there?" or at least a subset of it, "Is there a reality independent of our observation of it?" we believe we have an answer: No. Why? Because there's no out there. We and our act of observation are an implicit part of that which is being observed.

On the second question, "Can reality be defined?" there appears room for debate. Some are convinced that eventually we will find a way to describe all of reality with a single mathematical scheme. Not with descriptions of discrete objects with determined paths, as scientists once believed. More along the lines of fields and probabilities. But describable and definable in human terms, nonetheless.

Or perhaps this, too, is beyond us. Perhaps even the general predictability we observe is no more than a phantom of the tools we have at our disposal to observe it with. In which case, the whole proposition of science is in deep trouble.

At any rate, anyone who ventures more than ankle deep into the paradigms of science introduced in the last hundred years quickly realizes that reality is not what we thought it was. Today, respected scientists are presenting ideas that grope for an almost mystical basis for our understanding of the physical world. The division between religion and science that occurred in the Age of Reason appears to be undergoing a reversal. Once again, there is room for the mystic in the realm of science. Perhaps even a need.

As is well known, at the time when the underpinnings of the classic Newtonian/Euclidean world model were being rewritten by a small group of brilliant quantum physicists, the Lubavitcher Rebbe was studying at the eye of the storm--in the University of Berlin, from 1928-1932. Certainly, he must have sat in on the debates when Werner Heisenberg and his friends from the Copenhagen School came to lecture. Certainly he heard first hand the theories, concerns and reservations of the faculty of his department, which included Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrodinger and other deep thinkers who have had a major impact on how we think about the world.

Those years and those ideas are reflected in much of the Rebbe's thought. But rather than rewriting the traditional Torah worldview, the Rebbe treats the revolutionary discoveries of that era as empirical support for that which previously had been couched only in terms of faith.

Let us touch here upon a few examples of the Rebbe's treatment of empirical science, with an aim to understanding the Rebbes own underpinnings for its scope and its function.

Uncertainty

There are a number of letters in which the Rebbe refers to the Uncertainty Principle. In 1971, in a letter to the editor of the Journal of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists, the Rebbe attacks the apologetic stance of some of that association's members on the grounds that they simply are not up to date with what is science. The Rebbe refers specifically to those who

seem to be ashamed to declare openly their adherence to such basic tenets of the Torah as, e.g. that G-d created Adam and Chava, or the possibility of a miracle (Ness) in the present day and age, as a miracle is defined in Torah, namely, an occurrence in defiance of the (so-called) laws of nature.

Need one remind our orthodox Jewish scientists, who still feel embarrassed about some old-fashioned Torah truths, in the face of scientific hypotheses, that Heisenberg's principle of indeterminacy has finally done away with the traditional scientific notion that cause and effect are mechanically linked, so that it is quite unscientific to hold that one event is an inevitable consequence of another, but only most probable? Most scientists have accepted this principle of uncertainty (enunciated by Werner Heisenberg1 in 1927) as being intrinsic to the whole universe. The 19th century dogmatic, mechanistic, and deterministic attitude of science is gone. The modern scientist no longer expects to find Truth in science. The current and universally accepted view of science itself is that science must reconcile itself to the idea that whatever progress it makes, it will always deal with probabilities; not with certainties or absolutes.

These words are a clear echo of Heisenberg's own classic statement:

In the sharp formulation of the law of causality-- 'if we know the present exactly, we can calculate the future'--it is not the conclusion that is wrong but the premise.

In other words, since there is no way to know a precise present, we cannot calculate the future. Heisenberg took this one step further: He challenged the notion of simple causality in nature, that every determinate cause in nature is followed by the resulting effect.2 Rather, each state allows infinite possibilities and all we can predict is which are more probable than others. Why one occurs and not another is simply not within the realm of science.

If so, the Rebbe declares, science is in no position to declare any event impossible. Improbable, perhaps. But the concept that there are "Laws of Nature" which, in their absolute omnipotence will not allow certain events to occur--this is no longer an acceptable position. And so falls by the wayside the ancient assertion that has survived since the Hellenists versus the Maccabees--perhaps even since Moses versus Pharaoh's research scientists--that miracles cannot happen. Today, everybody agrees that anything could happen. As the Rebbe goes on to state:

This is all the more regrettable precisely in this day and age, after science has finally come out of its Medieval wrappings and accepted the Heisenberg principle of uncertainty, etc., etc., which makes its so easy for an orthodox Jewish scientist to espouse the Torah-hashkofo boldly and forcefully, without fear of contradiction.

So far, it seems that the Rebbe upholds Heisenberg's principle. But then, in the same letter, the Rebbe continues:

Needless to say, it is not my intention to belittle science, applied or speculative, and especially for quite another reason. For, as a matter of fact, the Torah bestows upon science--in certain areas at least--a validity much greater than contemporary science itself claims. The Halacha accepts scientific findings, in many instances, not as possible or probable, but as certain and true. There is surely no need to elaborate to you on this.

In another letter, written in 1963, the Rebbe remarks further concerning the Uncertainty Principle:

Parenthetically, this view is at variance with the concept of Nature and our knowledge of it (=science) as espoused by the Torah, since the idea of nissim [--"miracles"] implies a change in a fixed order and not the occurrence of a least probable extent.

The Rebbe is saying, in other words, that there are facts that are not just probabilities and they are knowable through human observation. This is basic to Torah in two ways: First, because Halachah (Torah law) relies on the testimony of human observation--which includes science. Secondly, because nissim----miracles--are defined in Halachah as something outside the regular order of nature, implying that there is a regular order of nature, only that there are events that do not fit into that order.

To understand all this we must first state something which should be obvious: It is in fact absurd to imagine that the Rebbe should adopt the concept of reality held by Heisenberg and his friends. The very basis of their world views are so opposed, it is difficult to imagine they could converge at all.

The religion of Heisenberg is Pragmatism: All that exists is that which can be verified in a laboratory experiment. Heisenberg even used this basis to reject the theorems of the older Ernst Schrodinger, claiming they assumed the existence of entities that could not be verified, and were therefore metaphysical. Heisenberg reasoned that just as Einstein had rejected the notion of absolute time and absolute space since these were no more than metaphysical concepts, so he and his colleagues can reject Schrodinger's wave mechanics on the same grounds.

Most intelligent lay people don't really get this Neo-Humean Pragmatism--in other words, they can't really believe that these scientists are really saying what they are saying: That all that exists is that which the current set of laboratory data says exists. But that is certainly the basis of Heisenberg's rejection of causality. He realized that there are certain things inherently beyond the realm of precise measurement, due to the very nature of human observation: When we measure the position of an electron, we cannot know its velocity. When we measure its velocity, we cannot know its position. Therefore, it does not have a precise velocity and position because we cannot know it--and all that exists is that which we can know,

On the other hand, his logic continued, something we can know and can describe with current mathematics is probabilities. And we can verify probabilities in the laboratory. Therefore, probabilities exist. But discrete events do not.

The Rebbe, on the other hand, begins with the assumption, In the beginning G-d created the heavens and the earth. There is a world. It was here for five and something days before we arrived on the scene--so it doesnt depend upon us to exist. And so it is possible for the electron to have a precise position and velocity even if we cannot measure it. G-d can measure it--since He put it there.

Similarly concerning Einstein: The Rebbe writes that paradoxes arise from Einstein's relativity due to his failure to regard the existence of Absolute Time. How does the Rebbe know that Absolute Time exists? Because, In the beginning G-d created the heavens and the earth. Which implies the creation of Time.

Therefore, the Rebbe can accept that there is an established order of nature--whether we are able to know precisely what that order is or not.

Could we say then that the Rebbe doesn't at all agree with Heisenberg? That he is only countering the argument of the scientists on their own ground, saying, You want to rely on science? Science itself says don't rely on me! But perhaps the Rebbe himself believes that we can rely on science, that there is a chain of cause and effect throughout nature--only that miracles can occur to break that chain.

It is difficult to read the words of the Rebbe's letter that way: Heisenberg's 'principle of indeterminacy' has finally done away with the traditional scientific notion that cause and effect are mechanically linked. But, most compelling, this would put G-d, miracles and Torah in a very exogenous position to the cosmos. All these things would have to be considered aliens breaking into our orderly world. This doesn't at all fit with the description Chassidic teaching gives of the Creation, and certainly not consistent with the Rebbe's version, as we will soon see.

Rather, it appears that the Rebbe has his own modified version of the Uncertainty Principle. He asserts that there is an established order to which miracles present an exception, yet concurs that this established order is not a product of Cause and Effect and neither is it strictly determinate. The Rebbe does not agree that reality begins with human observation, but he does believe that discrete events only exist within the realm of human observation. And, most interesting, the Rebbe establishes that the ultimate world is that world of human experience.

Resolving the Cosmos

To understand this position, lets go back to the very first time a human being opened his eyes upon the world. Here is the passage from the Torah that defines the archetype and quintessence of all scientific inquiry:

G-d had formed every beast of the field and every bird of heaven out of the ground. He now brought them to the man to see what he would name each one. Whatever the man called each living thing, that is its name. (Genesis 2:19)

The Midrash brings out further the beauty of this passage:

When the Holy One, blessed be He, came to create humankind, He consulted with His ministering angels, saying, Let us make Adam. The angels responded, What's so wonderful about this Adam? So He brought each of the creatures before the angels and asked them, This creature, what is its name? But they did not know. Then He brought the creatures before Adam and asked Adam, This creature, what is its name? To which Adam responded, This is Shor [Hebrew for ox], this is Chamor [donkey]

Adam is here more than an individual. He is all of humanity in a single body and the events of his creation and his life are a description of our position in the cosmos. So when we ask, What exactly was Adam accomplishing by naming each creature that no other being, not even the angels, could accomplish? we are in effect asking, What does the human being achieve by observing, categorizing and applying the tools of his language to the world about him?

This is how the Rebbe reads this story: G-d says to Adam, I have just formed all my creatures, big and small, but I have left the finishing touches up to you. I have a specific idea of what each thing is and how it should be, but I have nevertheless created no more than generalities. I said, 'Let there be trees'--and the power invested in those words brought trees into being. But I didnt specify in those words the particular characteristics I desired for each tree. And similarly with animals, and with everything else I created: I have brought them to a state of general existence, but their individuality is left unresolved. Your job is to resolve each thing into its unique, discrete state--as I originally had in mind.

In short, Adam, with his power of cognizance and speech, is completing Creation. And that is something the angels are incapable of. That is the unique position of a human being who observes a physical world: He is the place in the cosmos where all things crystallize and become resolved and defined.

[This is also reflected in a later stage in this same story: When Adam and Chava ate from the Tree of Knowledge and acquired a mundane experience of the world, the entire world was redefined and descended with them. When you've got that kind of power, you've got to watch out what you do with it.]

This role as partner in the final stage of Creation is what G-d meant Adam to be when He placed him in the Garden, to work it and to protect it (Genesis 2:15). As it turns out, Adam's compulsion to name things is not so much for his sake as for theirs. By naming the creatures, Adam brings them from a latent state to their fulfillment. Until Adam builds his own understanding of a creature through observation, and then articulates that understanding in his own speech, the creature doesn't yet fully exist.

It is impossible not to note the striking similarity of this idea to the conception, espoused by several contemporary physicists and based on the uncertainty principle, that until the act of observation there are only probabilities, and the act of observation is itself that which effects the discrete events that we observe. Recently, laboratory research has provided strong empirical basis for this theory. The Rebbe accepts this not only in the microcosm of quantum physics, but in the realm of common human perception as well. This is also supported by work of physicists such as Richard Feynman and by those who work in the field of Chaos Theory. They point out that one little electron can make a world of a difference.

There are key distinctions, however: In the Rebbe's concept, there is already a loosely defined world before Adam gets there. Adam is not creating a reality out of a limitless range of probabilities, he is only bringing it to a higher level of definition. And secondly, Adam's determination of reality has the imprimatur of the Creator Himself. This world of human experience is that which the Creator of All Things originally desired, and is therefore a true reality.

Applications

If this interpretation is correct, one would expect to find the same concept pervading Jewish thought. In fact, anyone familiar with the Talmud recognizes that its sages have a quite different understanding of reality than is generally accepted. Applying the insight we have just described renders that conception much more congruous.

As an example, there is a Talmudic dictum, A blessing cannot rest on something that has been counted, weighed or measured, but only on something which is concealed from the eye. Meaning that until a thing is measured, its amount is still indeterminate and subject to more than one outcome. Only once measured is it of a fixed, specific amount.

This is not just a nice aphorism. It is a practical Halachah: Before a person begins to measure the grain he has stored in his granary, or otherwise balance unascertained accounts, he may pronounce a blessing, Blessed are You, Lord our G-d, King of the Universe, Who places His blessing upon this stored grain. Once the person has already completed measuring, however, the blessing can no longer be pronounced. It is then considered "a prayer in vain.

Of course, a miracle could happen and magical wheat could appear out of nowhere. But, as the Talmud discusses in this regard, we are not discussing miracles here. We are discussing the nature of things. Before something is measured by a human being, it is indeterminate by nature. Once counted, measured or weighed, its amount is fixed in a way that only a supernatural occurrence can change.

A more pervasive example is the Torah concept of testimony of witnesses. In Torah law, the only conclusive evidence is the testimony of two corroborated witnesses testifying to precisely the same event from the same perspective. As Maimonides writes, even if we see two enter a room, one runs out and the other is found inside dead with a knife in his back, we do not have conclusive evidence that A murdered B. If two witnesses did not see it, we have only a probability. Once it has been witnessed, it is a fact.

Perhaps--and this is my own thinking here, I haven't found support for this yet from any classic authority--perhaps this could give some rationale to why the Torah demands two witnesses. A single witness in a capital or corporal case, even if he be the most impeccable of witnesses, is no more than an idle gossiper. A hundred witnesses, on the other hand, are no better than two. Perhaps this is because to absolutely determine an event we need not just an individuals perception and testimony, but a perception of the collective consciousness. Once we have two concurring seats of consciousness, we have left the realm of the individual and entered into the realm of the collective group, and so the matter is sufficiently established as a discrete event. A fact.3 By the way, this aspect of subjective concurrence is also vital to the scientific method.

Eidut --the testimony of witnesses--is such a pervasive concept throughout Torah, that the entire veracity of the Torah itself rests upon it. How do we know the Torah is true? Because we have testimony not of one individual, but of a mass of people who all witnessed the same event and agreed with a common and precise description of that event. Even the testimony of later prophets is only accepted on the basis of this mass testimony, as is explained at length by Maimonides.

This is also reflected in the Rebbe's response concerning scientific speculation. Facts are those things that can be observed and reproduced under the same conditions. Conjectures about the future or the past cannot be considered science--since there has been no human observation. Once a phenomena has been observed under the same conditions repeatedly, it may be considered that we have discovered a pattern in the established order of things--but we have not established that this phenomena must continue occurring, and certainly not that it always has occurred in the past.

But the most pervasive and persuasive evidence that the Torah considers what's out there to be inherently indeterminate is from one of the foundation stones of Torah itself: the concept of free choice. If the universe were a set of discrete objects on precisely determined paths, obviously there would be no room for our free choice. The fact that there is a Torah containing commandments, with reward and punishment attached, is a direct implication that the world is essentially indeterminate. This is quite succinctly the classic Torah world view: The world provides a range of possibilities, even probabilities--but malleable ones. Nature does not determine outcomes. That is left up to us.

Deeper

What does this order of things look like before we get there?

Before we attempt to answer this, consider an analogy: Let's say you were a cold blade of grass inside a morning mist. The mist condenses onto your stalk as droplets of water.

What would you know of that mist? You cannot see it. You cannot hear, smell or in any other way perceive the mist until it reaches your stalk. So you know the wetness of the droplets. But would you ever know what is mist? Obviously not. Because you only know the mist as it touches you. But a mist is not the wetness of droplets of water. It is a mist. Perhaps, before it touches you, the mist is dry

Our perception is limited in a similar fashion. Although, unlike the blade of grass, we are capable of seeing beyond ourselves, our physical senses are only capable of handling discrete sensations. As the Talmud rules concerning listening to the reading of the megillah or the sound of the shofar, we are not capable of paying attention to two voices at a time. Not that we cannot hear them--the sound certainly enters our ears and is processed by our brain. But it is processed in a serial fashion. And the more involved we are in defining that sensation in order to articulate it in words, the more linear it becomes.

I'd like to note that there are exceptions to this rule--as the Talmud and the Halachists themselves note. In fact, Rabbi Nissim Mindel wrote that he frequently witnessed the Rebbe reading one letter while dictating another to him in an utterly efficacious manner. And then the Rebbe would go on to dictate a detailed response to the letter he had just read. But that is certainly not within the realm of common human experience.

This is how Chassidic teaching describes the difference between a physical object and a matter of the spirit. Ideas can coexist and freely blend into each other and so can emotions--at least, mature emotions. A person can have many different emotions and certainly many different ideas sharing the same space. Angels, apparently, can perform the same trick. And when it comes to time, time is not so clearly defined in the spiritual realms. What is now and what is going to happen is not so clearly delineated.

The more refined the level of spirituality, the more this is so. Until, within the realm of G-dliness, all things and all of time coexist within a single point.

Physicality, on the other hand, is by definition precisely the opposite. A physical object is that which cannot share its space with another physical object. When your put your physical finger to it, it either resists or gets out of the way. At best it may fill the open crevices that allow it in. But there is no physical object that does not demand its discrete, private space.

This, then, is the limitation of our physical perception: Being physical, we cannot perceive without defining everything into tight physical packages--just as the grass cannot touch the mist without condensing it into water. And the deeper our perception, the more defined the object becomes.

This is why the Rebbe tells us science needs Torah--especially the mystical aspects of Torah--and Torah needs science. Science discusses the outer layer of existence--the droplets of water that reach our perception. Torah discusses the inner soul--the mist thats out there, and further still. Since the droplets are of the mist, they can best be understood by one who knows the mist as well. And, on the other hand, understanding the droplets is a vital part of understanding the mist.

To hear what Torah has to say about that mist, the inner workings of the cosmos before it reaches us, let us return to the story of Adam naming the creatures.

Seeing Inside

The names Adam gave each thing are the droplets condensed from the mist. Only that the mist in this case is a creative force.

To conceive of this relationship between the name of a thing and its inner soul, we need to think of objects and creatures in different terms than we are used to. Rather than conceiving of static objects made of self-sustaining matter, we need to understand all things, including non-living matter, as kinetic events--again quite similar to the model used by quantum physicists. Each of these event-objects requires a constant flow of energy from the original source of existence to sustain it. The event-object and its flow of energy are effectually inseparable, like a hologram is inseparable from the light that projects it. So too here, without the creative energy that sustains it, the event ceases and the object returns to nothingness. Furthermore, since the source of this energy is beyond the space-time continuum, if the flow were interrupted for even a moment, the space and time of an object/event would cancel retroactively, i.e. it would never have existed.

Each entity of the cosmos has a distinct set of forces that sustain its particular form of existence at each moment. This same set of forces is also reflected in the combination of letters that form a Hebrew word. When Adam observed an animal, he was able to realize that combination of letters and express it--i.e. condense it--in language. These are the names he gave that so much impressed the angels.

The Rebbe explains that by defining the animal correctly, Adam initiated a connection that was previously lacking between the source of that creature in the Divine Will and its manifest existence on the physical plane. This bridge is something only Adam is capable of, due to his inherently unbounded capacity.

This is the classic conception of the human being in Kabbalah. Adam below is understood as a reflection of a higher form, called, Adam Ha-Elyon. This Supernal Adam is none other than the familiar arrangement of the ten sefirot of wisdom, understanding, knowledge, kindness, severity, etc. through which the flow of Divine creative energy is invested to create and direct the world.

Here, a paradox occurs: The Divine Energy, even after many stages of compression and condensation, remains essentially unbounded, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Nevertheless, the qualitatively finite vessels of the ten sefirot are able to receive it. The mechanism that allows this is called hitkalelut or intra-inclusivity. Each sefirah contains within it all of the other ten. As well, all ten are interconnected to each other. The gestalt of such interconnectibility provides them a transcendent capacity to contain the infinite. They become the place where the infinite force attains form while remaining infinite.

The flesh and blood Adam in the physical realm is the final stage of this process. Since we also contain all things within us, and in a highly integrated state as above, we are also capable of perceiving the amorphous life-force within each thing and bring it to final resolution and definition.

Nature and Miracles

We can now better understand the "established order" as the Rebbe conceives it. The cosmos is not a billiard table where each ball and each force have inherent claims to existence and can be attributed as the cause to a consequent effect. Rather, the existence and trajectory of each object is projected at each moment from a source that transcends the entire scheme.

"Nature" is when each object is directed with consideration to the properties assigned that object at the outset of its creation. Water must flow, so the creative energy directs it accordingly. Rocks are supposed to stand still unless some other force moves them, so their creative energy doesn't tell them to get up and walk away. But, being no more than finite expressions of an infinite force, the precision of their behavior can remain somewhat blurry.

This is the obvious meaning of a simple statement from the Talmud:

When Rabbi Yochanan would see a kingfisher sweep down from its perch and grab a fish from the sea, he would say, "Your judgements are over the face of the deep".

Meaning, as Rashi explains, that on each event there is an account and a judgement made to determine an outcome: Kingfishers eat fish daily. But which fish by which bird at what time? For that there is a constant process which happens in a realm beyond that of the created beings themselves.

Miracles are a different scheme where those assigned properties are either temporarily ignored, or reassigned. Since the objects have no inherent claim of ownership to their behaviors to begin with, they don't even protest. It turns out that G-d is very much at one with His universe and His miracles are not so invasive after all.

The Rebbe also finds direct support for this concept from another Midrash: The rabbis tell that when G-d created the sea, He made its existence conditional: It must split when the Jewish people arrive at its banks. And similarly, all the cosmos is created with the capacity to succumb to a miracle built in. Meaning that there is nothing about them that says they can't be projected into existence in a different format when the need arises. Again, they are expressions of something higher, not autonomous objects.

This is a pervasive theme throughout the Rebbes talks: Nature is G-dly. It is G-dly, infinite wisdom, greater than any miracle. Miracles occur within this wondrous framework, but they never upstage the wonder of nature itself: The wonder that anything at all exists and that it is constantly projected into being within such a consistent framework.

Summary

Taking all the above into account, we have a comprehensive picture of the human being-- his scientific ventures, his technology, his culture and acts of human expression in art, music and especially in words-- not as an outside observer of the creation, but as an integral part of the ongoing creative process.

Indeed, together with the harnessing of power, all our technological progress can be traced along the precedent Adam set in the Garden of sharpening definition. The revolution of written language-- particularly the highly linear form of the phonetic language; the development of mathematics and especially calculus; and in our time the ultimate reduction of all media to digital terms allowing the development of a vast communications network and multimedia, all follow this pattern that Adam began by naming subcategories of "every beast of the field and bird of the heaven". Each time we fine-tune the tools of language and mathematics to describe our world in more precise and linear terms, we find ourselves leaping ahead in domination of our environment.

But the point is that we are not simply manipulators of our environment. In this ongoing, historical process of finer and finer precision and definition there is in effect a resolution of higher purpose. As we reduce all phenomena to their most fundamental elements, we uncover a deep, inherent oneness in the universe. As we reduce all information and media to a common language made of only two words--yes and no--we discover the paths by which we can integrate them to form a single whole, with all of humanity swept along into a single consciousness reminiscent of the consciousness of Adam and Chava in the Garden.

Divorced from the inner reality that lies beyond our physical perception, we have nothing other than more and more fragments. A very bewildering, endless collection of fragments. Once we reintroduce to our journey the element of the transcendental, a knowledge of the mist from whence those droplets come, the fragments race to arrange themselves in purposeful resolution.

May that final resolution be sooner than we imagine.