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(Artist: Daniya Ahsan)
Hamad Mobeen, UK
Humans are more than just a biological composition of matter
The bodies of all animals and plants (including humans) comprise particles and molecules arranged in a highly sophisticated fashion. The functioning of the biological body is driven by mechanisms that utilize the very atoms and molecules constituting its structure. They are subject to the laws of chemistry and physics, which not only govern intricate atomic and molecular interactions but also guide the process along its way. For free will to facilitate truly free actions and decisions, it must not be coercively subjected in any single definitive direction. Professor William Provine of Cornell University, a leading historian in biological science observed that:
“There exists no rational evidence for a biological mechanism that can produce “free will” in humans.” (Provine, W. B. (1993, January). Scientific Supernaturalism. Biology and Philosophy, p. 123.)
Even the famous theory of evolution by natural selection as presented by Charles Darwin, which evoked great passion among the general public as well as the scientific community, does not rule out metaphysical phenomena. Many people, including scientists who find no inherent conflict between the theory of evolution and their religious beliefs, see evolution as a means to explain the development of the human body while God is needed to explain the creation of the human soul that is miraculously integrated within each body as a manifestation of God’s command. Humans, at the centre of importance, being the culmination of God’s handiwork, exist not due to their bodies but because of their souls which gives them unique abilities – the power to make highly intelligent choices, to love and ruminate love, to contemplate the nature of good versus evil, to plan and orchestrate hyper-complex ideas, to forgive and to debate the very nature of existence.
Quantum mechanics fails to explain free will
The dawn of this century heralded some bewildering strides in technological advancements, such that within only two decades, humankind was catapulted into a new age. The emergence of quantum physics is one such example. Whereas this field of study greatly contributed to the overall scientific community, its basic constituents were so mind-boggling that great minds such as Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, and Richard Feynman, who are among the founding pioneers of quantum physics, were compelled to describe it as one of the greatest mysteries of the universe. Niels Bohr, for instance, described his thoughts in the following words: “If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.”
Sir Isaac Newton developed laws of motion that were extremely deterministic. This means that the mathematical equations which embody these laws give exact answers. With these equations, the exact velocity and position of a test item can be determined simultaneously, subject only to experimental accuracy. Scientists made great progress in discovering laws that described the physical world. These laws enabled them to predict how matter acts when subjected to defined forces. The laws of motion were very successful in describing the physical world, ranging from the interaction of small objects on earth to the motion of planets. In the 1800s, the laws of energy and thermodynamics were added to the classical laws of physics. Remarkable advances in science and industry resulted therefrom. One of the most beneficial characteristics of classical mechanics is that the laws are very precise and deterministic. The laws of classical physics are in the form of mathematical equations, and as a scientist measures an experiment more precisely, the results fit the established law more closely.
In the late 1800s, scientists began discovering physical phenomena that did not follow the laws of classical mechanics. The laws of motion worked well when they were applied to physical objects encountered in everyday life, problems with the laws of motion started appearing when scientists began investigating nature on the atomic scale.
Natural Science cannot explain free will
The peculiar behaviour of particles at the quantum level would presumably favour scientists and thinkers who were already endeavouring to find the roots of consciousness and free will within the natural world. Some began to speculate that these phenomena might be embedded within the inherent indeterminacy of quantum mechanics — in the fuzziness of matter described by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the wave-particle duality, or the collapse of the wave function. (All of which are highly complex and sophisticated concepts in quantum mechanics.) In fact, the very nature of quantum mechanics is often described as evasively mysterious, suggesting that human consciousness may just as well be yet another extension of cognitive activity. However, the source of free will and human consciousness, per se, cannot emerge from the mere physical behaviour of quantum mechanics, which follows a minutely specific code defined by its own laws. As Eugene Hecht puts it:
“Despite its baffling and strange version of reality, Quantum Mechanics has never once failed an experimental test. It is extremely reliable, though not transparently comprehensible. It is likely true that ‘no one understands Quantum Mechanics,’ although it is equally true that in some wonderful way Quantum Mechanics understands the Universe.” (Hecht, E. (1998). Physics: Algebra/Trig (2nd ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Pub. Co. p. 5)
As quantum mechanics began to emerge within the scientific community, the unusual behaviour observed at the subatomic level started to become more intelligible. The mathematical framework of quantum mechanics yields probabilistic rather than deterministic results. For instance, the position of atomic particles is not described with certainty, but in terms of probability — that is, while we cannot simultaneously determine both the exact position and velocity of a particle (as stated by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle), we can calculate the likelihood of finding it in a particular region of space.
Physicists often represent these regions using probability shells or orbitals, which suggest where a particle is likely to be found. However, the precise location of the particle at any given moment remains undefined. The probabilistic equations of quantum mechanics, however, do not provide an explanation of the source of free will any better than the deterministic equations of Isaac Newton, because actions based on probabilities are no more free than something determined by the roll of a dice. Atomic particles (or waves), that are subject to the complex laws of probability of the atomic world, do not possess any more freedom to act on their own than macroscopic objects. Likewise, the fact that a human experimenter appears to exercise free will in choosing which aspect of nature to observe in a quantum experiment does not necessarily indicate that free will is a phenomenon grounded in the natural world.
On the contrary, since overwhelming experimental evidence indicates that all natural phenomena interact according to the laws of physics, the source of free will cannot be from among deterministic natural phenomena. Similarly implying that the atoms and molecules that make up the brain of the experimenter cannot be the source of the free choice one uses to decide which aspects of nature to investigate and how. Neither can the atoms and molecules that are the subject of an experiment ¨choose¨ which aspect of nature they will display. Quantum mechanics may help explain the mechanism used to implement a decision made through free well (via a quantum mechanical framework or some other system) but atoms and molecules subject to quantum mechanical interactions cannot be the ultimate source of free will.
The hard frontier of science
Professor Steven Weinberg, who shared the Nobel Prize in physics with Professor Dr. Abdul Salam, described that atoms do not have the freedom to behave “any way they want”. He writes:
“Today, even though we cannot predict everything that chemists may observe, we believe that atoms behave the way they do in chemical reactions because the physical principles that govern the electrons and electric forces inside atoms leave no freedom for the atoms to behave in any other way.” (Weinberg, S. (1992). Dreams of a Final Theory. New York: Pantheon Books. p. 9-10)
He further states:
“Quantum mechanics is not deterministic in the same sense as Newtonian mechanics; Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle warns that we cannot measure the position and velocity of a particle precisely at the same time, and, even if we make all of the measurements that are possible at one time, we can predict only probabilities about the results of experiments at any later time. Nevertheless we shall see that even in quantum mechanics there is still a sense in which the behaviour of any physical system is completely determined by its initial conditions and the laws of nature.” (Weinberg, S. (1992). Dreams of a Final Theory. New York: Pantheon Books. p. 37)
From the very inception of quantum mechanics, physicists have recognized that human consciousness cannot be explained by the characteristics of quantum mechanics alone, but they would not associate it to a supernatural phenomenon either. Werner Heisenberg recounted a conversation he had with Niels Bohr which outlined how quantum mechanics cannot explain human consciousness, but other laws might be able to do so one day which Bohr considered to be not of a spiritual nature but of a different kind:
“Another argument,” I continued, “that is occasionally brought up in favour of an extension of quantum theory is the existence of human consciousness. There can be no doubt that ‘consciousness’ does not occur in physics and chemistry, and I cannot see how it could possibly result from quantum mechanics. Yet any science that deals with living organisms must needs cover the phenomenon of consciousness, because consciousness, too, is part of reality.”
“This argument,” Niels said, “looks highly convincing at first sight. We can admittedly find nothing in physics or chemistry that has even a remote bearing on consciousness. Yet all of us know that there is such a thing as consciousness, simply because we have it ourselves. Hence consciousness must be part of nature, or, more generally, of reality, which means that, quite apart from the laws of physics and chemistry, as laid down in quantum theory, we must also consider laws of quite a different kind.” (Heisenberg, W. (1971). Physics and beyond; encounters and conversations. New York: Harper & Row. p. 114)
Free will is far and beyond
Scientists and philosophers who base their theories to explain the reality of free will on some complex mechanism of the microworld in the brain are doomed to the confines of circular reasoning. If the human brain is made up of atomic particles that are not affected by an outside force or some decision-making agent, then any process within the brain is simply the finite interaction of the very same particles and molecules. Based on the theory of quantum mechanics, atomic particles and wave functions will certainly interact with one another governed by the probabilistic laws of quantum physics. The results of such interactions will be very predictable, because even after decades of experimentation, not a single reliable experiment has been found to contradict the theory of quantum mechanics. Thus, if consciousness and any cognitive activity alone is just the interplay of atomic particles, then such cognitive behaviour will not be free in any possible way.
A probabilistic model can be described as an analogy of throwing a bucket full of one thousand pennies. The number of heads and tails would be within a very small percentage of five hundred each (50 percent heads and 50 percent tails). If all of the pennies were numbered before they were dropped, it would be impossible to predict whether any given penny would end up “heads” or “tails.” In fact, if someone were to predict how a penny would land on the floor, there would be a fifty percent chance that it would be wrong. Conversely, one would be able to predict with great accuracy the percentage of all pennies that would land “heads” or “tails”.
This simple example demonstrates how a probabilistic model fundamentally works. Even though the outcome of any single coin toss is not deterministic, the overall behaviour of the system becomes highly predictable. In fact, with an increasing number of the initial pennies, the total percentage of heads and tails for all drops will come closer and closer to fifty percent, unless some outside force affects the coins. The coins themselves cannot decide, either individually or as a group, whether to turn heads or tails. Nor can they decide to make themselves turn up 70 percent heads and 30 percent tails.
The known laws of science must be defied if one tries to explain free will by quantum physical processes or any other theory of the natural world as we know it today. Any theory which either claims that a physical phenomenon, originating on the quantum level inside neurons or conventionally as a product between neuronal connections, is the source of human free will contradicts decades of scientific evidence. The quantum theory provides neither the flexibility nor the substance to explain free will, let alone disprove that it is truly free. This is precisely why the great minds of this century, while advocating the quantum theory, still consider it a “provisional” theory that yet fails to explain consciousness and free will. For them, much still remains unexplained beyond the computational scope of their findings.
Regardless of which scientific theory ultimately gains prominence, it is clear that the foundation of free will cannot emerge from deterministic physical mechanisms governed solely by the natural laws of the universe. Fundamental entities such as particles, waves, energies, and forces inherently lack autonomous cognition or decision-making capabilities. Consequently, the uniquely human capacity to exercise free will, characterized by independent thought, intentionality, and choice-making, must necessarily originate from beyond the deterministic constraints of the observable universe. Therefore, the notion of a “soul” is neither irrational nor scientifically incongruous; rather, it is logically coherent and intellectually tenable. This perspective strongly indicates the existence of an external agent capable of interacting dynamically and intelligently with the human body. And this conclusion is at the heart of the teachings of Islam.
About the author: Hamad Mobeen is a graduate of Jamia Ahmadiyya Canada and a missionary of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.
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