Did a 17th Century Philosopher Think the Universe was a Simulation?
On the similarities between Idealism and Simulation Theory
On the similarities between Idealism and Simulation Theory
The 17th century saw one of the most famous intellectual rivalries in history. It pitted Isaac Newton against Gottfried Leibniz, and while their feud ostensibly revolved around who invented the calculus, some would argue their disagreements actually went much deeper.
That, at least, is the theory advanced in Neal Stephenson’s The Baroque Cycle, a trilogy of novels that weaves the Newton-Leibniz row into a much larger narrative about the birth of modernity.
This is the era when natural philosophy is giving way to science, trade to industry, and mercantilism to capitalism. In each case we have, not a clean transition, but an evolution in which old ways of thinking continue to inform new practices.
For example, the way that capitalism substitutes promissory notes for hoarded gold — and seems to create wealth out of thin air — is likened to a kind of alchemy. And alchemy itself is held in esteem and contempt alike by natural philosophers who bitterly contest the proper way to plumb nature’s mysteries.
But resistance to modern practices doesn’t just reflect a failure to think beyond received categories like “alchemy.” It also indicates a fear of what competing paradigms might imply about humanity’s nature and destiny.
And that’s the real heart of the dispute between Newton and Leibniz. The latter is no more devout than the former, but in Newton’s universe of atoms colliding like billiard balls, Leibniz sees a reductive materialism that leaves no room for a God who remains continuously involved in Creation, nor for agents who possess free will.
Atoms vs. monads
Of course, given the difference in their name recognition, you could argue that Newton’s materialistic paradigm won out. But what makes The Baroque Cycle so interesting is the way Stephenson gets us to confront the possibility that, at least in some respects, Leibniz may have been right.
For example, while today we have a better understanding of the fundamental physical forces that act on matter and energy, and a somewhat consilient view of how physics shades into chemistry, chemistry into biology, and biology into psychology, in Newton’s day none of this was clear.
Stephenson has Leibniz ask Princess Caroline of Hanover, “have you any idea just how complicated a billiard ball must be, to bounce? It is a fallacy to think that that most primitive of entities, the atom, can partake of any of the myriad qualities of a polished spherical lump of an elephant’s tusk.”
Leibniz’s point is that Newton’s model of a world composed fundamentally of atoms, and governed by his three laws of motion, can’t possibly explain the reality we observe. Forget about free will and consciousness. Why is it that some atoms collide and bounce off each other, while others stick together to form larger objects? And how is it that a large object such as the sun can affect the planets, without their ever touching each other?
When we get into a difficulty, we cannot suddenly wave our hands and say, ‘At this point there is a miracle,’ or ‘Here I invoke a wholly new thing called Force which has nothing to do with atoms.’
Instead, Leibniz suggests a world composed of what he calls monads. Like atoms, monads are supposed to be infinitesimally small, and all the matter in the world is made of them. But whereas any given atom of gold, say, is identical to any other, all monads are unique.
They are unique because, even though Leibniz wouldn’t have worded it this way, they are essentially composed of data. Each monad possesses a picture of the universe from its own vantage point. But the picture is interactive, in the sense that when a monad perceives another monad, it is influenced by it, and influences other monads in turn.
Some have described Leibniz’s monads as having souls, but what Leibniz really meant was that each monad possessed a kind of internal state that was informed by its picture of the universe, and could change depending on how that picture changed.
The ‘brain’ of the monad, then, is a mechanism whereby some rule of action is carried out, based upon the stored state of the rest of the universe. Very crudely, you might think of it as like one of those books that gamblers are forever poring over: let us say ‘Monsieur Belfort’s Infallible System for Winning at Basset.’ The book, when all the verbiage is stripped away, consists essentially of a rule — a complicated one — that dictates how a player should act, given a particular arrangement of cards and wagers on the basset-table….
The game is, au fond, not really that complicated, and neither is Monsieur Belfort’s Infallible System; yet when these simple rules are set to working around the basset-table, the results are vastly more complex and unpredictable than one would ever expect.
Stephenson is obviously putting words into Leibniz’s mouth to help us see the latter’s philosophy in decidedly more modern terms, specifically those of computing and the mathematics of computation. But having read The Monadology, I don’t think Stephenson is taking too many liberties here. Monads are essentially teeny-tiny universal Turing machines, and Stephenson isn’t the first person to see a connection between Leibniz and computing.
Newton’s theory of universal gravitation, with its stripped-down metaphysics of colliding atoms, turned out to be a more fruitful research program at that point in history, before industry and mass production made the possibility of building complex computational engines more realistic.
But it does make you wonder: what if the Industrial Revolution had kicked off a few decades earlier? Would an already mechanized world have found Leibniz’s picture of fundamental reality more familiar? Might we have seen the first working computers in the mid-18th century, instead of the mid-20th?
The Watchmaker vs. the Simulator
These kinds of tantalizing speculations are one of the reasons I love science fiction. And fans of Stephenson know that with many of his novels (in particular any that feature the character Enoch Root) he strongly hints that the universe where they unfold is actually a simulation.
And in the context of this story, it’s a fascinating thought, because remember: Leibniz is concerned with developing a theory of reality that makes sense of our observations while weaving them together with his theological beliefs about God being an active participant in Creation.
He rejects the idea of God as a Divine Watchmaker, who sets the world in motion but then sits back to let it wind down according to fixed physical laws. He wants instead for there to be some degree of knowledge and agency built into every grain of matter in the universe.
And if the universe is indeed a simulation, then Leibniz’s picture of reality is far closer to the truth than Newton’s. There are no hard little bits of matter, but there may very well be something like monads, tiny stores of data running more or less complicated programs. Some of those programs may even be intelligent.
The great irony of The Baroque Cycle is that while Leibniz believes his philosophy points to the role of God in the universe, we readers know that it’s really pointing to the simulators, who are presumably just humans like us, but from the real world.
And to appreciate this irony is also to appreciate the irony of any argument that attempts to establish the logical necessity of a divine Creator. I’m generally skeptical of such arguments, especially when used by Christians who seem to think that if they can just prove theism, the entire theological edifice of Christianity will somehow follow. But it turns out they can’t even get you to theism.
Even if you could prove the universe was created, you could never step outside it to know whether your creator was an omniscient, omnibenevolent Watchmaker, or just a Simulator with perhaps no more empathy or intelligence than yourself.
Leibniz believed we lived in “the best of all possible worlds.” He was mocked by writers like Voltaire who asked how the Thirty Years’ War, or the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, were possibly necessary to the world’s perfection. But Leibniz believed the world was perfect because, he reasoned, how could God create anything less?
How indeed? Depending on who’s doing the creating, there’s your answer.