Causality Then and Now Al Ghazali and Quantum Theory

Abstract

Ate appearances deceiving? Do objects behave the way they do because
God wills it? Ate objects impetmanent and do they only exist because
they ate continuously created by God? According to a1 Ghazlli, the
answers to all of these questions ate yes. Objects that appear to be
permanent are not. Those relationships commonly tefemed to as causal
are a result of God’s habits rather than because one event inevitably leads
to another. God creates everything in the universe continuously; if He
ceased to create it, it would no longer exist.
These ideas seem oddly naive and unscientific to people living in the
twentieth century. They seem at odds with the common conception of the
physical world. Common sense says that the universe is made of teal
objects that persist in time. Furthermore, the behavior of these objects is
reasonable, logical, and predictable. The belief that the univetse is understandable
via logic and reason harkens back to Newton’s mechanical view
of the universe and has provided one of the basic underpinnings of
science for centuries. Although most people believe that the world is accutately
described by this sort of mechanical model, the appropriateness
of such a model has been called into question by recent scientific
advances, and in particular, by quantum theory. This theory implies that
the physical world is actually very different from what a mechanical
model would predit.
Quantum theory seeks to explain the nature of physical entities and
the way that they interact. It atose in the early part of the twentieth century
in response to new scientific data that could not be incorporated successfully
into the ptevailing mechanical view of the universe. Due largely ...