INTERPRETANTS AND THIRDNESS IN THE WORLD OF THE QUANTA
Independent Researcher, USA
Abstract
Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr and Charles Saunders Peirce: What do these men, separated by both a continent and time, all have in common? Fundamentally, the ability to see universal concepts in completely novel ways. All were revolutionary thinkers with the ability to strike to the core of the fundamental elements of what makes up existence. The common thread between all three: the universal – pure being, what the Latins refered to as esse. Being is the essence of life itself. Yet when we get down to the most basic, sub-atomic level of being itself, we arrive at the ultimate paradox of existence: that between how things seem to be and how they truly are. Pierce died in 1914, at the very advent of quantum physics. Bohr was just out of college then at 29, and Heisenberg was only 13. Pierce left the world his theory of signs, just as Bohr was beginning to explore the world of the atom, and Heisenberg was taking his first basic science classes. Heisenberg later befriended Bohr, but neither man met Pierce, and their revolutionary discoveries about the quantum world were published years after Peirce discovered that existence consists of the triadic action of signs. Yet Peirce’s concepts of the interpretant and Thirdness mesh strangely well with Bohr and Heisenberg’s Copenhagen Interpretation of the discoveries of quantum physics, with its emphasis on the role of the observer. For what Bohr and Heisenberg discovered about the basic fundaments of nature seems to validate Peirce’s belief that, no matter how closely one looked at the world, no matter how strong a microscope one put it under, what one would find would be the action of signs. It is indeed by this action that the world moves from chaotic randomness to concrete wholeness. The ultimate paradox of being itself is therefore found in the triadic action of signs.
[…]the basic changes in modern science must yet be considered as expressions of changes in our very existence and thus as affecting every realm of life. If this be the case, even those who try to fathom the essence of nature creatively or philosophically must take notice of the changes in the scientist’s idea of nature that have taken place during the last two decades.
Werner Heisenberg ([1958] 1970)
[…]we meet in experimental evidence concerning atomic particles with regularities of a novel type, incompatible with deterministic analysis. These quantal laws determine the peculiar stability and reactions of atomic systems, and are thus ultimately responsible for the properties of matter on which our means of observation depends.
Niels Bohr ([1963] 1987)
[…]the highest grade of reality is only reached by signs[…]
Charles Sanders Peirce to Lady Victoria Welby ([1904, Oct. 12] 1977)
Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr and Charles Saunders Peirce: What do these men, separated by both a continent and time, all have in common? Fundamentally, the ability to see universal concepts in completely novel ways, blending philosophy and mathematics with scientific and creative inquiry in ways never dreamt of before. All were revolutionary thinkers with the ability to strike to the core of the paradox of what makes up existence. The common thread between all three: the universal, pure being, what the Latins referred to as esse. They all played on their skiff of musement, as Peirce would say, searching for the keys to the universe, and all, in their own way, finding them. Pierce died in 1914, at the very advent of quantum physics. Bohr was just out of college then at 29, and Heisenberg was only 13. Pierce left the world his theory of signs, just as Bohr was beginning to explore the world of the atom, and Heisenberg was taking his first basic science classes. Heisenberg later befriended Bohr, but neither man met Pierce, and their revolutionary discoveries about the quantum world were published years after Peirce discovered that the world consists of the triadic action of signs. Yet Peirce’s concepts of the interpretant and thirdness mesh strangely well with the paradox of Bohr and Heisenberg’s atomic theory, with its emphasis on the role of the observer. For the paradox that Bohr and Heisenberg found at the root of all existence seems to validate Peirce’s belief that, no matter how closely one looked at the world, no matter how strong a microscope one put it under, what one would find would be the action of signs.
In order to understand how Peirce’s semiotics fits into Bohr and Heisenberg’s world of the quanta, we must discover first what that world consists of. The atom is made up of a proton, a neutron and multiple electrons swirling around the former two in a chaotic pattern of randomness. (Atomic particles much smaller than these have since been discovered; most exhibit the same, strange, erratic behavior as the randomly orbiting electron.) What Bohr and Heisenberg simultaneously discovered (while on a forced vacation from one another) was that there was one thing that seemed to stop the elusive electron in its tracks: observation (or as Bohr put it, the measuring apparatus). This was the only explanation for the quantum weirdness exhibited by the electron when tests were performed on it. What the two formulated on their separate retreats was what came to be known as The Copenhagen Interpretation. It incorporated Bohr’s Principle of Complementarity with Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and came to the conclusion that the world, at its smallest level, was statistical and uncertain, not objective in the way Newtonian mechanics had claimed for centuries. The objective world we experience simply does not exist at the most basic levels of existence. The building blocks for the world we experience as concrete are as effervescing as air. This idea was puzzling, to say the least, even to the two men involved. Heisenberg quotes Bohr as saying, “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you have not understood quantum mechanics.” (1970)
In addition, The Copenhagen Interpretation claimed that to refer to the idea of the physicality of atomic matter at all is an oxymoron. Atoms, the building blocks of the world, have nothing that corresponds with the idea of matter. And yet they are the basis of every substance we see, including ourselves. The realization Bohr and Heisenberg both came to was that the Newtonian world of material things does not exist at all until someone looks for it. The world we live in is observer-created. Heisenberg puts it succinctly, in The Physicist’s Concept of Nature, when he says:
It has become clear that the desired objective reality of the elementary particles is too crude an oversimplification of what really happens, and that it must give way to very much more abstract conceptions. For if we wish to form a picture of the nature of these elementary particles, we can no longer ignore the physical processes through which we obtain our knowledge of them. (1970)
Bohr, in his philosophical writings puts it thus: “Far from involving any special intricacy, the irreversible amplification effects on which the recording of the presence of atomic objects rests rather remind us of the essential irreversibility inherent in the very concept of observation.” (1987) But how on earth could this paradox possibly be? What proof led these two brilliant men to come to this startling conclusion at the same time, separated by miles of distance?
Heisenberg and Bohr’s ideas were their responses to a little quantum experiment known as the double-slit experiment, which illustrated that electrons appear as waves of probability when not observed, but show up as particles when someone looks for them. The experiment is set-up thus: On one side of a barrier wall with two perpendicular slits in it is a hot tungsten filament that shoots out electrons. On the other is a television screen that records any electron that comes in contact with it. With one slit closed, electrons are projected at the wall, and those that get through the hole are recorded as dots on the screen. One after another, the electrons are propelled through the hole, and each time they appear as particles. However, open both slits and something strange happens. Instead of recording a series of dots left by individual electrons, an interference pattern appears, as would appear when two oceans waves overlap while hitting a wall. Instead of individual particles hitting the screen resembling the pattern that little bullets fired through the hole by a machine gun would show, a target pattern is found, such as one would see should one direct a wave of water at a wall. But these are not waves of matter the screen is detecting, but waves of probability that the electron will show up at any given place on the screen. And it is not that the little particles of electrons are moving through the barriers, one-by-one, like they are surfers riding a wave. Each electron actually spreads out in a wave-like fashion and goes through both holes at once. Talk about a paradox, indeed!
If reality is objective, as Newtonian mechanics suggested, then this experiment makes no logical sense. Once a particle, always a particle. The same machine gun-like pattern should be seen whether we open slit one, open slit two or open them both at once. But this is not what happens. However, when we set-up a detection mechanism at the other side of the two open holes to see which one the electron is going through, what we see is one electron after the other going through either hole one or hole two. Basically, when we are looking to see what happens, the particle acts like a particle, when we turn off the detecting mechanism, the particle turns into a wave. Now you see it; now you do not! This is quantum weirdness, the ultimate paradox, at its best. Look for a particle, you see a particle; turn your gaze away, and the particle turns into a wave. The electron is both particle and wave at the same time. This kills any idea of an objective world, making it literally impossible for us to visualize what is happening on the atomic level. The final paradox of reality is that we can never see reality in its primal state.
Here, Peirce’s idea of the interpretant suddenly becomes fundamental in order for the world to exist for us at all. The interpretant is what Peirce calls the mental connection that exists between a sign and its observer. Peirce sees this act of consciousness as an idea of something, which links the two together, but what if the meaning of interpretant is expanded to encompass the idea of the mere observation of something, before conscious thought occurs at all? Then particles become particles, when we engage the interpretant and look for them. Omit the interpretant, and particles turn into waves. Peirce’s triadic action of signs then becomes an explanation for how the world exists for us as we experience it: solid, objective, Newtonian to the core. As Peirce, paraphrasing Kant, says, “All cognition of objects is relative that is we know things only in their relations to us.” ([1868] 1991) We only know of objects via the action of the interpretant (an observation), which connects sign-vehicle (the waves of quantum particles) to the sign (the object we see), making it cognitive to us. It explains what Heisenberg means when he states:
We can no longer speak of the behavior of the particle independently of the process of observation. As a final consequence, the natural laws formulated mathematically in quantum theory no longer deal with the elementary particles themselves but with our knowledge of them. Nor is it any longer possible to ask whether or not these particles exist in space and time objectively, since the only process we can refer to as taking place are those that represent the interplay of particles with some other physical system. (1970)
The interpretant, in the form of an observation, is therefore central to our apprehension of the world. It is what allows us to visualize things objectively. To walk around touching tabletops, and marbles and other hard surfaces, which are actually made of nothing but probability waves composed mainly of empty space. Pierce describes the interpretant as the “appeal of a sign to the mind”, saying thus:
Let us now see what the appeal of a sign to the mind amounts to. It produces a certain idea in the mind, which is the idea that it is a sign of the thing it signifies and an idea is itself a sign, for an idea is an object and it represents an object. The idea itself has its material quality, which is the feeling that there is in thinking. (1991)
We look for something, the interpretant engages it, and there it is. Only Peirce’s triadic set-up of sign, sign-vehicle and interpretant makes this idea even slightly comprehensible. Peirce goes on to say, “Thus our mere sensations are only the material quality of our ideas considered as signs. Our ideas have also a causal connection with the things that they represent without which there would be no real knowledge.” (1991)
The paradox here is that, without the interpretant, the material world, as we know it does not exist at all.
Another of Peirce’s concepts further aids us in better understanding the world at the atomic level. Here the link is what Peirce called thirdness. Peirce explains it in the following manner:
I should define Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness thus: Firstness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, positively and without reference to anything else. Secondness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, with respect to a second but regardless of any third. Thirdness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, in bringing a second and third into relation to each other. (1991)
In the case at hand, firstness is the world at the atomic level. Secondness is the objective world as we experience it and thirdness is our observation of it, which transforms the First into the Second.
The idea of firstness being life at the atomic level meshes well with Peirce’s thoughts on the matter. He says
The unanalyzed total impression made by any manifold not thought of as actual fact, but simply as a quality, as simple positive possibility of appearance is an idea of Firstness. Note the naiveté of Firstness.[…]The idea of the present instant, which, whether it exists or not, is naturally thought as a point in time in which no thought can take place or any detail be separated, is an idea of Firstness. (1991)
Note how the words positive possibility parallel nicely with the potential or probability so predominant in the laws of quantum physics. Firstness is the state the world is in when it is totally unanalyzed – i.e. unobserved. The quantum world is truly the manifold of all existence, yet in many ways, it is no more than a quality. It is no more than an appearance on a television screen of an interference pattern that suggests what electrons do when unobserved. There is a certain naiveté involved on the electrons’ part. They only seem aware of being particles when we stop and take a look at them. They do exist in the present instant, that moment before we consciously look for them. And the quantum world is indeed interconnected without any appearance of separation; the most minute particles known to us will sometimes split due to a crash collision amongst two electrons, sending one half of the particle clear across the globe. Yet the now separated particles still continue to affect one another. The ultimate state of firstness, it would appear, is found at the atomic level.
The atomic world fits so well into the world of signs, it is startling. Peirce describes the First thus:
The First must be therefore present and immediate, so as not to be second to a representation…It must be initiative, original, spontaneous, and free…It precedes all synthesis and all differentiation: it has no unity and no parts. It cannot be articulately thought: assert it, and it has already lost its characteristic innocence…Stop to think of it, and it has flown. (1991)
The quantum world is everywhere, all the time. It permeates all we are and do. It has always existed since time began. It was here at the birth of the universe and will continue until its death. Everything we interact with and are surrounded by is composed of it, including ourselves. It is second to none. It is literally the source all the triadic relations that make up our world spring from. It is spontaneous to the extreme, with its freely moving particles of probability waves. It is the initiative, the very beginning act, necessary in order that anything else exist. It is firstness incarnate, preceding all other form of existence. It cannot be differentiated, yet it has no unity. It is primeval, indivisible. It has no parts; there is no matter in what makes up what we see as matter. The paradox of lifer at its most basic level, the level of firstness, is that matter does not exist.
Secondness is the world as we experience it. It is the semiotically subjective element of our world that makes up what we term objects. It is in the moment after firstness that the world loses its quantum character. The objective world we experience every moment of our lives is what meshes with Peircs category of secondness. It does take effort to become conscious of the world. It is necessary that we observe it before it becomes our reality. Remember the paradox of quantum weirdness: if we do not look for a particle, it does not exist. True it is usually an unconscious effort, but we are all at times aware of more intense observation and the effort it takes. A day trip to the local museum to stare intently at the artwork there, in order to get at its meaning, is all that is needed to show that. It takes so much effort to observe something intently that museums now have cafeterias on their premises, so you can replenish all the energy it has taken. The effort we exert while unconsciously changing the structure of esse – ‘being’ – every second of our existence does not leave us running for food. In fact we do not notice it at all until we stop and focus on what we are doing. There is no hidden purpose or agenda behind it. It is completely prescinded from any such thought. It is too instantaneous for that to happen. Most of the time the objective world rolls out at our glance, with no thought of purpose on our part at all.
“Thirdness is the triadic relation existing between a sign, its object, and the interpreting thought, itself a sign, considered as constituting the mode of being a sign. A sign mediates between the interpretant sign and its object,” (1977) Peirce explains in his correspondence to Lady Victoria Welby. In the model we have been looking at, the quantum world is the object, which gives us the raw material, through our unconscious observation in the form of the interpretant. This enables us to view the world of signs that surrounds us, which we experience as an objective, deterministic world. Existence (for each of us a highly individual experience) is truly the mode of being that allows us to view the world objectively. It is truly our world, and it consists of the action of signs. As Peirce puts it, “…all our thought and knowledge is by signs.” (1991) Peirce further notes “If you take an ordinary triadic relation, you will always find a mental element in it. Brute action is Secondness, any mentality involves Thirdness.” (1991) Thirdness is the glue that links our reality together. In other words, it is the mental element that in truth creates this world out of seething foam of random probabilities. The quantum world becomes our objective world through the thirdness – the mentality – of our experience in it.
“First and Second…are categories which enable us roughly to describe the facts of experience…The Third is that which bridges over the chasm between the absolute first and last, and brings them into relationship.” (1991)What brings the atomic world and our objective world into relationship is observation. If we are observing it (and we always are when not asleep), the gap between the two worlds is bridged by our conscious gaze. Look for the world, and you will find it. Observe it, and there it is. The Third is the element of relationship that our gaze gives. In an observer-created world, the conscious gaze is as certain as the relationship that changes the atomic world into the world we experience as solid matter.
Science has now shown us that our experience of the universe is only half of the picture, a paradox frightening for many, intriuging for other. Still, when visualized as consisting of a triad of Firsts, Seconds and Thirds - signs, sign vehicles and interpretants - our interactions with the atomic world, and how those relationships create the very things we are interacting with, seem, perhaps, a little less mysterious, a little bit less of a paradox. The quantum world might be forever outside the limits of our perception, but we have none-the-less discovered it. And in the end, life consists of actions; observation simply provides the setting for all the action to take place in. “All the world is a stage,” ([1599] 1974) Shakespeare said, and all the world consists of action: the triadic action of signs.
References:
BOHR, Niels. 1987 [1958–1962]. The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr, Vol III, Essays 1958–1962 on Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge. Woodbridge, Connecticut: Ox Bow Press.
HEISENBERG, Werner. 1970 [1958]. The Physicist’s Conception of Nature. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
PEIRCE, Charles Sanders. 1991 [1868]. “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man”, Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2 103–114. Reprinted in Signs and Peirce on Signs, James Hooper (ed.). Chapell Hill, N. Carolina: University of North Carolina Press.
PEIRCE, Charles Sanders. 1977 [1904]. SIgnifics, The Correspondence Between Charles S. Peirce and Lady Victoria Welby. Charles S. Hardwick (ed.). Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press.
SHAKERSPEARE, William. 1974 [1599]. As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin,