The logical possibility of natural spontaneity

The logical possibility of natural spontaneity
As it turns out, natural spontaneity is advocated by modern physicists in the field of quantum mechanics. So, the theoretical allowance for it by aetiology provides a rational basis and a language for the putative phenomenon. This concept has no positive definition, but is defined by negation, note well. Events subject to natural spontaneity would be events without any discernible complete causative (deterministic cause), events not subject to natural law – and, of course, not products of human (or more broadly animal) volition. Thus, natural spontaneity refers to chance – chance in a real and deep sense; it implies that we cannot make an exact prediction, even if we may be able to estimate probability, of occurrence.
Granting the existence of natural spontaneity, it should be regarded – together with causation – as a mechanical event; a sort of determinism, in an expanded sense of the term, because it too involves no will.
Logic cannot, of course, affirm the existence of such pure chance events a priori; but nor can it deny them offhand. It can only admit the possibility of a posteriori proof, directly or indirectly, by scientific observation/experiment and credible ad hoc theorizing efforts. The truth is that it is notoriously difficult to definitively empirically prove that an event is naturally spontaneous, for we may always imagine that perhaps it is due to some underlying deterministic cause(s) that we have not yet discovered[1]. Even if today we do not find a sufficient cause for the observed event, and must assume natural spontaneity, we may conceivably at some future time discover some new physical phenomena that allow us to find a sufficient cause for it. The assumption of natural spontaneity is always, necessarily, inductive.
In any case, to repeat, natural spontaneity would qualify as mechanistic, in the sense that we humans have no power over it and cannot control it, i.e. that it is not to any extent due to volition (see below). However, on the basis of the principle of induction, if we have diligently searched, in a presumably mechanistic domain, for a deterministic cause (to wit, a complete/sufficient causative) and not found one, we can reasonably say that there may well be natural spontaneity in this specific context. This does not establish the possibility of natural spontaneity with deductive force, but it does establish it inductively (until, if ever, physicists change their minds concerning it).
This seems to be the methodological argument behind the general acceptance of the Heisenberg Principle in quantum mechanics. This Uncertainty Principle, as it is also called, may be briefly formulated as follows:
“The more precisely the position of a particle is known, the less precisely its momentum can be known, and vice versa. To measure position, we need to interact with the particle in some way. This interaction will inevitably disturb the particle’s momentum, making it more uncertain. Similarly, to measure momentum, we need to interact with the particle in a way that will disturb its position.”[2]
Some argue that because the observer’s attempt to find out the physical fact may, at those levels, affect that fact, it is appropriate to speak of uncertainty. However, I would reply that the researcher’s possible effect on the fact is still of a physical nature and is not about consciousness. The phenomenon itself is quite physical, even if it results in unpredictability. The principle concerns physical processes, and not primarily the mind’s relation to the physical world. Thus, the principle is not an epistemic one, as the word uncertainty suggests, but more precisely put an ontical one, so that the name Indeterminacy Principle would seem preferable.
The Heisenberg Principle is due to the wave-particle duality of matter. Quantum physicists have discovered that all particles have both wave-like and particle-like properties. In certain physical circumstances an electron has the detected characteristics of a particle, and in other physical circumstances it has the detected characteristics of a wave. The fact that these physical circumstances may happen to have been generated by a human being in the context of a scientific experiment, and that due to such unexpected results, the researcher is unable to determine whether the electron is a particle or a wave, does not make this experiment anything to do with “the observer” (as it is usually presented).
The act of observation in such experiment is quite incidental to the unpredictability of the electron’s physical behavior. The mind is no more involved here than in any ordinary physical activities, such as a man driving a car or playing tennis; once put in motion by human will, the car and the tennis racquet are entirely subject to physical laws. Similarly, in the above-mentioned quantum physics experiment, the experimenter drives the machinery that sends out an electron, and reads the machinery that tracks the electron’s behavior, but the mind is not especially involved, i.e. the process observed is entirely physical.
I am not a physicist and have no axe to grind in that field: I always accept whatever physicists consider the best hypothesis at any given time. My concern here is only with the philosophical spin applied to, and the language consequently used for, certain physical discoveries. There is a perverse desire, in some circles, to deny objectivity and affirm subjectivity. This fashionable epistemology projects a wholly fallacious interpretation on the physical events observed, concluding that in quantum mechanics experiments the observer as such somehow affects the result. This is a false, tendentious conclusion from the given data, a misuse of the facts of the case to support an anti-rational philosophical posture.[3]
We can well admit natural spontaneity, without taking it to have irrational implications.
 

[1]              This argument was already put forward long ago by the Stoic Chrysippus of Soli (Greece, 279-206 BCE), who “taught that apparent causelessness in a particular event could mean only a kind of causation hidden from human insight” (Windelband, p. 181). Chrysippus was (like Democritus, but unlike Aristotle) a thoroughgoing determinist, who made no allowance for chance or voluntary events.
[2]              Quoting Gemini. This suffices for our purpose here.
[3]              Consider for instance the following citations: “The stuff of the world is mind stuff” (Sir Arthur Eddington, in ‘The Nature of the Physical World’). “For what quantum mechanics says is that nothing is real and we cannot say anything about what things are doing when we are not looking at them” (John Gribbin, in ‘In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat’). Both proposed by Wong Kiew Kit, in The Complete Book of Zen (UK: Vermilion, 2001), p. 104, in support of his belief that modern science agrees with Buddhist mind-only claims.