By David Topper

Deeply absorbed in an exceptionally long essay in the New York Review of Books about a very esoteric book on “the trouble with reality” – and I’m speaking here of epistemology and ontology; namely, that nature of “reality” – and more specifically as elucidated by mainly this trio of thinkers (Immanuel Kant, Jorge Luis Borges, & Werner Heisenberg; in order, philosopher, novelist, & physicist), I feel ever drawn deeper into their sometimes paradoxical worlds. A world, for example, envisioned by Borges, in which a man has such perfect memory that he can recall every leaf of every tree that he has seen in his entire life; but, nonetheless, cannot comprehend the word “tree.” Indeed, what do we mean when we say “tree”? What is our thought process compared to this gifted, but unfortunate, man?         It’s also the world, going back to one of the earliest Greek thinkers of whom we know, Zeno of Elea. He put forward this paradox: if a man walks toward a wall, he must go halfway there, and once there, he again goes halfway to the wall, and once again halfway, etc. But this can go on forever, cutting the path in half: halfway, halfway, halfway, etc. It therefore would take an infinite time to get to the wall; and hence, the only logical conclusion is that motion itself is an illusion. This is an example of the disjunction between what we see, and how it is when we probe deeper, rationally analyzing its parts. It was intellectual puzzlements like this that Kant said “woke me out of my dogmatic slumber” and formed the basis of what he called a critique of pure reason, where he methodically wrestled with the trouble with reality.

          Diving still deeper, now into the sub-atomic world of quantum physics, it gets even more “spooky” as we try to measure, say, the location and momentum of an electron. (Precisely: momentum is mass multiplied by speed.) But here’s the problem. The answer to this question from quantum physics is that as we zero in on the electron’s exact location, the momentum goes to infinity (ah, that concept again). And likewise, as we measure the momentum of the electron, zeroing ever closer to its exact number, its position goes to infinity. In short, we can precisely know its momentum, but then have no idea where this electron resides in the entire universe. This fundamental scientific conundrum was the brainchild of Heisenberg.

          As I read further into this “trouble with reality,” I come across this: the author says that one of the most memorable passages in the entire book that she is reviewing is from a 1942 essay by Heisenberg on the use of language in physics.

          Heisenberg in 1942?  Where? Leipzig or Berlin. Does it matter?

          Jolted out of my esoteric reverie, I’m back in Germany in the 1940s.

          No. Stop. Read this memorable passage. “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. When we speak of the picture of nature in the exact science of our age, we do not mean a picture of nature so much as a picture of our relationship with nature.”

          Yet, Germany. World War II. Images flash up: synagogues everywhere disappearing in flames, emaciated prisoners entrapped in death camps, mass shootings of entire villages with bodies dumped into deep ravines. 

          Wait, 1942. Heisenberg appointed principal scientist in the Nazi nuclear weapons program – the aim being to build a bomb.

          But, focus. Back to this “memorable” passage. Heisenberg tells me that “science no longer confronts nature as an objective observer, but sees itself as an actor in this interplay between man and nature. The scientific method of analyzing, explaining, and classifying has become conscious of its limitations, which arise out of the fact that by its intervention, science alters and refashions the object of investigation. In other words, method and object can no longer be separated.”

          Yes, yet. What about Heisenberg’s immediate, everyday world? How does he separate himself from this reality? Jewish shops and stores looted. Jews forced to stand in public with signs around their necks say they are “dirty Jews.” Brown-shirted thugs beat up non-Aryan men and woman in public, without retribution. Young girls dragged into dark alleys.

          This is no daydream. It can’t be rationalized away. Despite “that infinitely complex association among words and concepts, without which we would lack any sense at all that we have understood anything of the infinite abundance of reality.”  

          This esoteric world can no longer hold my attention. It’s not the trouble with reality anymore. It’s now Heisenberg’s very, very troubled reality, right in front of him! 

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.

          Is he like the man who knows every leaf but can’t comprehend the tree?

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

          I only know that I’munable to concentrate on, and to comprehend his otherwise memorable passage.

The best lack all conviction.

          Not now, anyway.

While the worst are full of passionate intensity.

          I must contemplate the prophetic words of Yeats.

          Yes.

Poetry.

     Now.  

                                                  ****

Sources: Meghan O’Gieblyn, “The Trouble with Reality,” New York Review of Books, March 21, 2024, pp. 10-16.  William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming.” This poem was first published in 1920.

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David R. Topper is a published writer living in Winnipeg, Canada. His work has appeared in Mono, Poetic Sun, Discretionary Love, Academy of theHeart & Mind, and elsewhere. Synchronized Chaos Magazine nominated his poem Seascape with Gulls: My Father’s Last Painting to Sundress Publications as a 2023 Best of the Net. It didn’t win.