Is the picture of reality given to us by modern physics incompatible with the picture of reality given to us by direct perception? No.
The answer lies in understanding the levels or grades of reality.
Arthur Eddington tells us that on an atomic level, the physical things were perceive as objects or bodies and as solid are largely empty space in which tiny invisible bodies such as atoms and subatomic particles move around at great speed, interact with one another in various ways and make the objects or bodies of our perceived world appear to be solid when, atomically, they are not.
Werner Heisenberg tells us that on a sub-atomic level, the moving components of the divisible atom are themselves intrinsically imperceptible to our senses, “unpicturable-in-principle.” They do not have any of the sensible qualities possessed by the perceptible physical things of our public and common experience. These elementary subatomic particles do not have even have the quantitative properties possessed by atoms and molecules; they do not have size, weight, shape or configuration. They are no longer material bodies in the proper sense of the word. They are units of matter only in the sense in which mass and energy are interchangeable. Nevertheless, they are capable of existence in different forms but always as definite quanta even though those quanta of mass/energy cannot be exclusively described as particles, for they are as much waves or wave packets.
Heisenberg gives the answer on how to the two pictures of reality can be reconciled when he describes this subatomic world as a world of potentialities and possibilities rather than one of things or facts. He uses the term “potentia,” potentials for being to describe the very low, perhaps least, degree of reality that can be possessed by elementary particles. In saying that elementary particles are not as real as the perceptible things of our common experience, he does not deny that they have some reality. The merely possible, that which has no actual existence at all, has no reality. He is not describing something of that order. That which has some potentiality and tends towards existence has a degree of reality more than the merely possible. He is describing something of that order.
The solution is the recognition of the distinction between actual and virtual existence. As constituent components of say one physical thing, the elementary particles have only virtual existence and only virtual multiplicity. Their virtual existence and virtual multiplicity is not incompatible with or contradictory to the actual unity of the one physical thing observed in the macro world of everyday life. Their actual existence and their actual multitude only arises when that one physical thing is exploded in a cyclotron. When that happens, their virtual existence is turned into an actual existence and their virtual multiplicity is turned into an actual multitude. The point here is that when elementary particles exist virtually in a physical thing, their mode of existence or level or grade of reality is and cannot be the same as when they exist actually in a cyclotron.
Reality can be understood in terms of hierarchical levels or grades of actualization. The world of subatomic particles is not the world of the merely possible, that which has no actual existence at all, that which has no reality. It is the world of some potentiality, a potentiality that tends towards existence, a world which has the lowest grade or level of reality possible, a level of reality just above the merely possible. The subatomic world of ultimate particles in a cyclotron is at the bottom of that hierarchy, describing a degree of actualization that is just above the merely possible. The macro world of everyday life is near the top describing a degree of high actualization in things, but permitting significant potential for development. The possible world of heaven, if it exists, would be higher, describing the fully actualized but permitting growth in terms of higher expressions of perfection. The possible world of God beyond space and time, if God exists, would be the highest, the realm of pure actuality, infinite perfection.
Rob Sutherland is a graduate of University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall Law School He is a criminal defence lawyer with 30 years experience, a member of the bars of Ontario, Alberta, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Manitoba. He is a Senior Canadian Fellow at the Mortimer J. Adler Centre for the Studies of the Great Ideas, an American think-tank based in Chicago. He has published one book “Putting God on Trial: the biblical Book of Job,” a defence of God’s goodness in the face of his authorization of undeserved and unremitted evil in the life of Job and the world, which is taught at a number of Canadian, American and Indian universities and available through Amazon. He is writing a second book “Putting Jesus on Trial: the biblical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,” a defence of Jesus’ divinity.
