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The implications physics has to your life

Over the course of history, humans have always wanted to predict and control the future. They wanted to know who they would marry, they wanted to know if they would become rich, and they always wanted to know their lifespan. It was fairly common for most cultures to have oracles, seers or palm readers. Over time, a myriad of religions have also attempted to answer the questions about a preordained future – and I leave it up to you to judge whether their answers are satisfactory. Having a pre-determined future, however, also means that whatever choices we make to alter the future would have no effect whatsoever on the final outcome. If that is indeed the case, then how do we know for sure that we have our fate in our own hands, or that we control our own future? Do we really have free will? It is in the realm of physics where I believe we can find some more definitive answers to the question of whether free will and pre-determinism exists.

In 1687 the famed Isaac Newton published his great scientific work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, in which he stated the three universal laws of motion and its validity to govern all objects. This represented a major step in understanding the world as it did not discern between a rock and the Moon; previously, for instance, Aristotle explained things in accordance to their “natural tendency”, such as smoke always rises upwards and stones always travel downwards. Between 1687 and 1905, almost every single phenomenon known to man, from heat to electromagnetism would be discovered, formalized in theory and explained.

However, the advancements in science had also led to a radical implication in philosophy. Newton’s laws of motion along with Maxwell’s equations are deterministic, which implied that if one could know the state of every single atom in the universe at a given time, that person could theoretically predict future events with perfect accuracy. This implication would have immense impact on the philosophical question of free will versus determinism, because we humans are also made up of atoms – the exact same thing as what Newton’s laws and Maxwell’s equations describe. If the future is already pre-determined, then no choice I make will ever affect the outcome. It also raises the question of whether or not and in what sense can a person make a decision and exercise control over his or her thoughts and actions. Classical physics’ deterministic laws imply that humans have no free will, because the current state of our bodies would already determine our future actions with the world and hence, it would be like saying I was born to write this essay and you were born to read it.
The radical theories of post-1905 were a major step in answering this conflict with common sense, although not without its own controversy. During these years, Einstein would show the world that the commonly accepted absolutes such as a universal time and length varied according to the speed of the observer, and that mass was simply a manifestation of energy. Most important and relevant to us, however, is Heisenberg’s formulation of his uncertainty principle within quantum mechanics in 1927, which stated that it was impossible to know simultaneously an object’s momentum and position accurately. This is based on Young’s double slit experiment performed with single electrons. You could accurately measure a particle’s velocity, but its position at that point in time would be impossible to locate – not due to any measurement error or incompetence of measurement tools, but an inherent part of the quantum mechanical system. This is summed up in a joke –
Werner Heisenberg was driving down the highway and a cop pulled him over. The officer walked up to his window and asked, "Sir, do you know how fast you were going?" Heisenberg replied, "No, but I know where I was.”
From this principle, It follows that we cannot know everything. As the behavior of all atoms is now shown to be random at the quantum level, it is also implied that pre-determinism does not exist.
The pressing question now is, if we do have free will, is it because of the random and uncertain behavior of protons and electrons in our brain that allows us to choose and make decisions, or is the inherent randomness of all particles, whose states cannot be known but can be predicted by probability, be used to argue that we do not have free will at all? Another question is, if we were given the same choice a second time, ceteris paribus, would we still make the same decision? Or would the randomness of all the atoms in our brain alter our thought process and make a different decision?
My take on this would be a paraphrasing of Rene Descartes’ argument of “Cogito, ergo sum”.
I can choose, therefore I know I am able to.
If we are to take this line of reasoning, and that I can choose for myself, then it naturally follows that my actions towards others are not pre-determined and vice versa; ergo, we do have free will but not have a pre-destined future.