Most people have fantasized about time travel and the future at some point in their childhood. The deterministic worldview, in which the future can be predicted according to scientific laws, was once a strong belief, but it was shaken by the discovery of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. The future is not set in stone and can change depending on our choices and actions. Instead of trying to predict the future, it’s important to focus on the present and try to shape it with a positive attitude.
Most people have fantasized about time travel at some point in their childhood. We used to wonder, “I want to go back in time and see dinosaurs in real life,” or “How will people live in the future?” We used to get lost in endless imaginative worlds. But as we grow up, we grow out of these fantasies and focus on more realistic issues. But the concept of “the future” still lingers in our minds. Whether it’s in the distant or near future, we’re conscious of the time to come, preparing for the present, dreaming of a better life, and moving toward the future. But what if the future we’re traveling toward is already set in stone, a road we can’t turn back from – a future that’s as fixed as fate, waiting for us regardless of our choices and actions?
Since Newtonian mechanics, scientists have believed that the world moves according to certain laws. This belief gave rise to the idea that if we knew the laws that explain all natural phenomena, we could predict future outcomes. For example, if a person lets go of a ball in their hand, the ball will naturally fall downward. We know the law of gravity, which states that the earth attracts the ball, and that a force applied to an object accelerates it in that direction. Therefore, we can predict the motion of the ball. These are simple examples, but they illustrate a long-held belief that the world works according to a set of scientific laws, and that if we understand them correctly, we can predict what will happen in the future.
Science and technology have advanced by leaps and bounds since the Industrial Revolution, and many scientists believed that the laws of nature could be used to predict the future. Research in many fields, including physics, chemistry, and biology, has led to the discovery of many scientific principles that can be applied to human life. Modern science is even attempting to scientifically understand emotions and behavior by analyzing the workings of neurons in the human brain and the responses of the nervous system. These studies have led to the hope that even human emotions and behavior may eventually become predictable, meaning that human behavior is also determined by scientific laws. This belief that the future could be understood through the laws of science dominated the thinking of scientists and the public until the early 20th century, reinforcing a deterministic worldview.
However, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, published in 1927, dramatically changed this deterministic worldview. The uncertainty principle stated that all objects do not move perfectly according to scientific laws, but rather have unmeasurable errors and uncertainties. This means that the position and momentum of all objects cannot be accurately measured simultaneously, and the outcome can only be predicted with probability. This means that in localized situations, we can still apply the laws we know to predict the future, but as time passes or the scope of the prediction widens, the uncertainty increases, making it impossible to predict the future with any accuracy. Predicting the future has become a quagmire. This leads to the conclusion that unless science overcomes the limits of uncertainty, it will never be possible to know the future with certainty.
Where does the human desire to predict the future come from? The answer is that our lives are intimately connected to the future. We all harbor hopes and fears about the future, and uncertainty about the future greatly influences our choices in the present. If we could know the future in advance, we could prepare for unforeseen risks and take deliberate action to change the future in our favor. Ironically, however, this desire for vague predictions often leads to anxiety and confusion.
The movie Minority Report explores this dilemma in an interesting way. In the movie, Agatha (Samantha Morton) is a psychic with the ability to see into the future, and her precognitive abilities are used by the police to prevent crimes in advance. The protagonist, John Anderton (Tom Cruise), learns through Agatha’s prophecy that he will become a criminal and tries to avoid that fate, but in the end, the events he tries to prevent happen, and in the final scene, Lamar Burgess (Max von Sydow) is given the opportunity to change his fate through his own choices, despite his knowledge of the future. The movie presents a situation where human free will is put to the test when the future is known, and the message is that it is not the future that is determined, but our thoughts and choices.
These stories also raise important questions for us. Does our desire to know the future bring us happiness and peace? Or is it a source of unnecessary anxiety and stress? While it can sometimes be helpful to know what’s going to happen in the future and prepare for it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the future will happen as predicted. In fact, it can be even more frustrating when what you thought you knew turns out differently than you expected. Rather than striving to know the future, it can give us peace of mind to accept the future as something new every moment.
The fact that the future is indeterminate actually gives us more freedom. It’s important that we live in the present, not in a future that’s determined, but in a future that’s constantly changing based on our own choices and efforts. Instead of worrying about what bad things might happen, we can live each day with a positive mindset that something good will happen tomorrow, and that’s true happiness. Letting go of the desire to predict the future and living in anticipation of a tomorrow that has yet to come will make your life richer.
