Wargo mentions Netwon's Laws of Motion that, from his reading, codified the billiard-ball idea of causation and that the efficacy of seeing the macro-world this way is why the idea of mechanism took hold during the Enlightenment.
I'm not sure this is the full story - first to get a sense of the controversy Newtwon's idea of gravity engendered in his time see Chomsky's
Science, Mind, and Limits of Understanding :
Quote:It is commonly believed that Newton showed that the world is a machine, following mechanical principles, and that we can therefore dismiss “the ghost in the machine,” the mind, with appropriate ridicule. The facts are the opposite: Newton exorcised the machine, leaving the ghost intact. The mind-body problem in its scientific form did indeed vanish as unformulable, because one of its terms, body, does not exist in any intelligible form. Newton knew this very well, and so did his great contemporaries.
Quote:Replacing the theological with a cognitive framework, David Hume agreed with these conclusions. In his history of England, Hume describes Newton as “the greatest and rarest genius that ever arose for the ornament and instruction of the species.” His most spectacular achievement was that while he “seemed to draw the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he shewed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy; and thereby restored [Nature’s] ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain.”
Beyond that, one might look to
David Ray Griffith on the trade off made (as he claims) by the Church and mechanists in order to push down the "occult" ideas arising that places consciousness/life into all matter. See also the prior Aristotelian idea of causation that preceded the mechanistic ideas. This is a huge aside so don't want to get too deep into this here.
Wargo then mentions the "dogma" of the Uncertainty Principle...this is an odd way to classify something that, AFAICTell, is something that has been a staple of physics. Perhaps he means the idea that there is randomness inherent to the quantum world? He notes the "Copenhagen Interpretation" is what keeps the "dogma" of the Uncertainty Principle in place...this seems wrong to me but maybe I'm being uncharitable about what he is saying?
He then says a growing number of converts believe that instead of randomness we have retrocausality. There is no citation for this growth at this point of the book, maybe it comes later.
He mentions Bem's controversial research on retrocausation, again a huge aside to get too deep into this - plus I think a lot of discussion has already taken place both here and on Skeptiko? I'll note he does make mention of teleology here, which would tie into Aristotle's concept of causation, but then goes from there into discussion of retrocausality/precognition. I am not sure, but it seems to me teleology would provide explanations - at least at the quantum level - that would be an alternative to retrocausal explanations?
What follows are some anecdotes, where Wargo - and some who sent him anecdotes about their precog experiences - wonder if the events could've been stopped or if they are fated to happen. One case seems remiss, where we don't know if one of these precogs did try to avoid the future after contacting Wargo to see if her thinking about fate held up. Perhaps it comes up later in the book?
He also seems to clump premonitions that went unheeded and those that arguably cannot be heeded b/c of fate...this seems like an error in my book but maybe it gets elucidated later.
Finally he quotes Bergson's Creative Evolution:
Quote:In his masterpiece Creative Evolution, he used a lump of sugar in a glass of water to illustrate an altered, intuitive perception of matter in its durée, or continuous unfolding. The way the sugar presents itself at any given moment to our senses, he argued, is just a shadow of its full glory; to fully apprehend it, Bergson wrote, “I must wait until the sugar melts.”
It's odd to quote Bergson - admittedly Wargo makes note of it too - given Bergson's philosophical career had to do with an argument against the block universe and the spatialization of time. For more on that see physicist Adam Frank's article, "
Was Einstein Wrong?"
The reason Wargo mentions this is to argue that the dissolution of the sugar was within the original cube, and even influenced the dissolution. But AFAIK we don't need retrocausation to explain solvency of water?