Okay, so this turned out to be very long...
Throughout history, man has harbored the selfish belief that they mean something and can have an influence on the Universe, all-the-while quite oblivious to their insignificance. I must give a small warning - here we must be cautious; we will be exploring the thoughts of great thinkers in modern physics. Einstein marks the birth of this so-called "modern physics" and it is with Einstein that science strays away from common sensual understanding. The ideas I will discuss here require abstract thought, and do not seem immediately natural, or for that matter, realistic.
Let us begin with an excerpt from a eulogy that Albert Einstein gave for a close friend in 1934...
"Now Besso has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
Einstein is referring to the relativity of simultaneity, a consequence of his theory of special relativity. This is the concept that simultaneity—whether two events occur at the same time—is not absolute, but depends on the observer's reference frame. Before eagerly trying to examine such notions in the vast arena of our own elegant universe, let's apply them to a smaller one. The universe in which the Underground Man exists, (a character in Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground) for example.
The Underground Man tells his imaginary audience in the very opening of his monologue that he "was a spiteful official." A few pages later, he denies this. He says that he "was lying ... when [he] said he was a spiteful official." From the perspective of the Underground Man, the first statement occurred before the second, perhaps a few minutes later - the time between the two statements filled with bitter monologue. For the reader, when we immerse ourselves in the Underground Man's universe, the events of both statements are also sequential. Here however, the linearity is expressed in the amount of space between the statements in a physical sense - the space between the two statements is filled with printed paragraphs of translated Russian literature.
When we discontinue our immersion in this smaller universe and come back to our own, we change our frame of reference. We can now observe the universe of the Underground Man objectively. We will call his universe Notes From the Underground. In this universe, both self-contradicting statements that the Underground Man makes exist simultaneously in two separate places at the same time. In fact, every statement that the Underground Man makes exists simultaneously. The timeline in the universe of Notes From the Underground breaks down. Time, here, is an illusion - every moment is happening, and always will, as it always has, simultaneously forever. Everything that the Underground Man will say or do, cannot be changed, because Notes From the Underground (which is his universe) will not change.
I do not mean for this to prove anything in terms of the autonomy of the Underground Man - yes he is not an autonomous being because he exists within the determined universe of a novel, however, that was a metaphor that I created to aid in the explanation of the relativity of spontaneity. My aim here is greater, for I wish to convince you that no one is autonomous. Let us remove the constrictions of the "novel" and examine whether or not the Underground Man is or is not autonomous in our universe.
The implications of Einstein's theory of special relativity are, to say plainly, disturbing. As the eccentric artist David McDurmott spells out for us, "this moment in time that we're experiencing has always been here and always will be - this moment in time … this is a permanent fixture of the universe". Autonomy of the self...free will...does it really exist? How can it if everything we will ever do has been done and is being done forever? Hard modern physics suggests that free will does not exist. This is a very troubling notion for not just you or I, but also the brilliant minds that work with the mathematical equations that prove these ideas, from Brian Greene to Micho Kaku. Brian Greene offers the Multi-verse theory as consolation. Though fascinating, I do not find it comforting in the face of the dissolution of free will - if every possible choice is made in infinitely many universes, in reality, there is no choice because you will make every choice. Brian Greene is content to accept the illusion of free will within the reference frame of this particular version of the Universe. Perhaps this is healthy.
These implications of the inexistence of autonomy have caused quite a stir in the philosophical and scientific community. One scientist in particular, to be specific, a neuroscientist by the name of Benjamin Libet, decided to examine what happened within the brain when a person made a choice. He did so in an experiment in which he asked volunteers to wiggle their finger at anytime they chose within the space of three minutes. By attaching an electrode to the skulls of volunteers, he was able to record an impulse in the brain called the "readiness potential" that appears when a person makes a decision. This readiness potential had been observed in previous studies, however, Libet wanted to examine, specifically, human will within a decision - so he also recorded the time when a volunteer consciously willed the action of finger movement.
The results were shocking. Libet found that the readiness potential occurred before the person decided to move their finger, and not even just before...but a full 30 seconds before. And so the question was raised - here asked for you by Neurologist V.S. Ramachandran - "if his will came in 30 seconds later, how can the will… have been responsible for the hand movement?"
The unsteadying answer is that will could not have been responsible. And so, we are forced to ask, in the face of not just abstract physics but also hard experimental evidence, are we autonomous? No, it does not seem that way. In the opening of Sir Francis Crick's book, The Scientific Search for the Soul, the renowned scientist states:
"You," your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.
What more is this than a way to say that we are no more than a piano key? Though he denied it, though he fought it, the Underground Man, in his universe or in ours, is not autonomous.
