Indeterminacy (philosophy) - Indeterminacy in New Physical Theories

Indeterminacy in New Physical Theories

Science generally attempts to eliminate vague definitions, causally inert entities, and indeterminate properties, via further observation, experimentation, characterization, and explanation. Occam's razor tends to eliminate causally inert entities from functioning models of quantifiable phenomena, but some quantitative models, such as quantum mechanics, actually imply certain indeterminacies, such as the relative indeterminacy of quantum particles' positions to the precision with which their momenta can be measured (and vice versa). (See Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle.)

One ardent supporter of the possibility of a final unifying theory (and thus, arguably, of the possibility of the end of some current indeterminacies) in physics, Steven Weinberg, stated in an interview with PBS that

"Sometimes people say that surely there's no final theory because, after all, every time we've made a step toward unification or toward simplification we always find more and more complexity there. That just means we haven't found it yet. Physicists never thought they had the final theory."

The Wikipedia article on the possibility of such a "theory of everything" notes that

"Other possibilities which may frustrate the explanatory capacity of a TOE may include sensitivity to the boundary conditions of the universe, or the existence of mathematical chaos in its solutions, making its predictions precise, but useless."

Chaos theory argues that precise prediction of the behavior of complex systems becomes impossible because of the observer's inability to gather all necessary data.

As yet, it seems entirely possible that there shall never be any "final theory" of all phenomena, and that, rather, explanations may instead breed more and more complex and exact explanations of the new phenomena uncovered by current experimentation. In this argument, the "indeterminacy" or "thing in itself" is the "final explanation" that will never be reached; this can be compared to the concept of the limit in calculus, in that quantities may approach, but never reach, a given limit in certain situations.