Acausal phenomena in physics and biology: a case for reconstruction.

Agr??t deal of so-called classical physics takes its cues from the work shop nd from the machinist' art. This is true no only in erms of generalities; it has often held in a very personal sense. For example, Isaac Newton was a passionate tinkerer in his younger years. Again, to take a more recent instance, this writer has had the privilege on two oc casions, of a lengthy scientific discussion with Albert Einstein. Although the specific subject matters were quite different, it was striking, each time, to see the way Einstein's mind was working through engineering images and how often he used the engineer's language. Interpolation of numberless other examples between these two giants of classical physics would be easy but the subject is too well known to insist upon it. To de scribe, as is customary, the philosophy of classical physics as mechanistic is apt phraseology. The introduction of statistical elements into physical theory became extensive about a century ago through kinetic theory, which was then mathematically organized into statistical mechanics. A much more radi cal penetration of statistical elements into physics occurred with the ad vent of quantum mechanics. The development of mathematical methods was rapid but the interpretation which constituted the breaking away from mechanistic types of thought was slower. Again, these matters are such a well-known part of scientific history that we need not dwell on them. Owing to the long-standing tradition of mechanistic models, sta tistical features have often been considered either as a nuisance or as a pretext for mathematical elegance in preference to the approach which we take here, namely, thinking of them as a class of remarkable natural phenomena in their own right. Along with the various mechanistic models of matter, there has throughout history existed another trend of natural philosophy: Its basic view is to think of matter as a creative agency. Since according to an age old adage nothing comes out of nothing, we need to state this proposition more clearly if it is to make sense. The possibility of its essentially abstract formulation will then become apparent in due turn. Because the mecha nist has at his disposal differential equations and the conservation laws which they imply, he can, and invariably does, push the problems of creation into the dim recesses of time and space. On the other hand, when we speak of creativity we must here imply that a material substrate is 502