Samizdata

In her 1993 paper “Causality Then and Now: Al Ghazali and Quantum Theory” Karen Harding makes the point that what is now called the “Occasionalism” of the 11th century Islamic thinker Al Ghazali is similar to the 20th century “Copenhagen Interpretation” of Quantum Theory. Al Ghazail’s position being to deny cause and effect, to claim that things just happen because God (in the Copenhagen Interpretation “the observer”) make them happen. For example that dropping a pot on a stone floor does not make the pot smash – that God first makes the pot drop (no law of gravity as such) and then makes the pot smash, with no necessary connection to the dropping of the pot. In the “Copenhagen Interpretation”, in Schrodinger’s famous attack upon the theory, a cat in a box is neither alive or dead till we open the box and “observe” the cat.

David Hume, back in the 18th century took God out of this form of thinking and just made it “ideas” associating in “the mind” – although Mr Hume also denied the existence of the mind, the “I”, at least in the ordinary common sense meaning of the term.

Karen Harding was not led by all the above to doubt the “Copenhagen Interpretation”, on the contrary she wrote to praise Al Ghazali (and thinkers like him) in spite of the effect of such thinking in closing the Islamic mind to science, to objective reality, and thus ending the “Golden Age”.

And Douglas Haig? As a Calvinist General Haig, like Al Ghazali (and other mainstream thinkers of Sunni Islam) was a Predestinationist – whatever happened was the will of God. If 20 thousand British soldiers were killed and 30 thousand wounded on one day (July 1st 1916) this is clearly what God wanted to happen and was, therefore, not the fault of Douglas Haig. And as General Haig was part of the “Elect” (Predestined for Salvation) he was, by definition, a good man. Therefore he, Haig, showed no shame over his conduct – as his conduct was, by definition, good (as he was part of God’s Elect), whatever he did. Backstabbing his commanding officer to get his job? Getting hundreds of thousand of British soldiers killed in offensives such as the Somme and Passchendaele? Picking incompetents such as Gough to conduct parts of the Passchendaele offensive in 1917 and the defence of the Western Front in 1918? Supporting calling off the war in 1918 just as the Allies were stating to win? Sending ten thousand men on a suicide attack on the second day of the Battle of Loos (eight thousand British soldiers either killed or wounded – German dead? what German dead?) in 1915? None of this was anything to be ashamed of, as it was all part of the Divine Plan – Divine Providence, the Will of God.

The only commanders to be punished were those commanders who resisted Divine Providence – by, for example, not sending their men into suicide attacks on July 1st 1916 – such men were sent home in disgrace for not showing sufficient “fighting spirit”. The tactics were wrong? The plan could not work? That form of thinking assumes objective reality and cause and effect – for example a connection between the orders of Douglas Haig and 20 thousand British soldiers being killed and 30 thousand being wounded on one day (July 1st 1916). But if objective realty does not exist, and there is no law of cause and effect – then reality is just what God (or “the observer” – in this case Douglas Haig) want it to be.

So people such as Paul Marks – who “combine the obsessive intellectualism of a Jew, with the wild temper of a Irishman” are just silly to get upset about it.