Is There a Relationship Between Things at the Bottom of Things?

What’s at the bottom of things? If we keep asking “Why?”, where do we end up? Some physicists postulate that everything stems from a single primordial force or particle, perhaps a super-symmetrical string, from which flow the myriad forces and particles of our fallen world. Others speculate that at the heart of reality there are at least two things doing something to each other. In other words, there is an interaction, a relationship. Call this the relationship doctrine.

The wildly inventive physicist John Wheeler was an early explorer of this notion. Noting the crucial role of measurement in the outcome of quantum experiments, Wheeler suggests that we live in a “participatory universe,” in which we bring the world into existence, and vice versa. Picking up on Wheeler’s idea, physicist Carlo Rovelli proposes what he calls a “relational” interpretation of quantum mechanics, which says things only exist in relation to other things.

Another eloquent explicator of the relationship doctrine is science writer Amanda Gefter. Gefter is dissatisfied with both strict materialism, which decrees that matter is fundamental, and idealism, which insists that mind precedes matter. Maybe, Gefter speculates, we don’t live in either a first-person world or a third-person world. Maybe we live in a second-person world, and the fundamental entity of existence is not “I” or “It” but “You.” “The second person always deals in relations,” Gefter explains, because every “You” implies an “I” interacting with the “You.”

Part of me finds the relationship doctrine, and especially Gefter’s you-centered metaphysics, beautiful and consoling, a welcome alternative to mindless materialism. The relationship doctrine also seems intuitively sensible. Just as words must be defined by other words, so we humans are defined, and to a certain extent brought into existence, by other human beings. How could it be otherwise?

And yet I have doubts about the relationship doctrine, as I do about all metaphysical systems that privilege mind, consciousness, observation, information. They smack of narcissism, anthropomorphism and wishful thinking. That’s why I have derided mind-centric theories as neo-geocentrism, throwbacks to the medieval belief that the universe revolves around us. The relationship doctrine, in particular, reminds me a bit too much of the sentimental slogan “God is love.”

To be honest, I’m suspicious of all ultimate theories. John Wheeler once wrote: “Surely someday, we can believe, we will grasp the central idea of it all as so simple, so beautiful, so compelling that we will all say to each other, ‘Oh, how -could it have been otherwise! How could we all have been so blind so long!’”

I once shared Wheeler’s yearning for a revelation so powerful that it would dispel the weirdness of existence. Now I fear such an epiphany. If we become convinced that we have figured things out, our creative endeavors–whether scientific, artistic, spiritual or political–might ossify. Fortunately, I have faith in humanity’s curiosity and restlessness. My hope, and expectation, is that the world will keep us guessing forever.

Scientific Curmudgeon is an Opinion column written by CAL Professor and Director of the Stevens Center for Science Writings, John Horgan. Columns are adapted from ones originally published on ScientificAmerican.com.