Chen Muwu sold the effect miserably, and successfully calmed the scene at this gathering of the Apostle Society.

Some of these people know about Boltzman, some don't.

However, whether they knew it or not, after listening to the dialogue between Chen Muwu and Wittgenstein, they all deeply felt sorry for this physicist who was attacked for insisting on scientific truth and fought alone until his death.

However, what does Chen Muwu mean now that he suddenly said that he, like Boltzmann, has been attacked by others because of his different academic opinions?

Boltzmann was attacked by Mach, Ostwald, and Zemelo - Zermelo was the mathematician Z who developed the Z-F axiom system in order to solve the paradox proposed by Russell, in addition to studying mathematics, he was also a student of Planck, and like other scientists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he was a cross-border expert.

And Chen Muwu compares himself to Boltzmann, is there any other hint of meaning?

Does he want to say that he is suffering more and more attacks, and in the end he has plans to commit suicide like Boltzmann?

There are many leaders in the study of various disciplines at Cambridge University, but the study of psychology is a little worse.

Ramsey was very worried after hearing this, he felt that he should find an opportunity to take Chen Muwu out for a walk, confined to the Cambridge University all day long, in addition to being busy with academics every day, there was no time to rest at all, and Dr. Chen's physical and mental health was also a big problem.

Why don't you find an opportunity to invite him to the beach for a vacation?

- Ramsey, who cares about chaos, completely forgets that Chen Muwu is a person who has just returned from a trip to Italy.

However, Wittgenstein, who is new to Dr. Chen today, is not very concerned about his physical and mental health, because Chen Muwu tied him up with a new question at the end of his words.

Causality.

Ever since Hume, the great English philosopher of the eighteenth century, he has been skeptical and negative about the subject of causality.

Cooking a delicious pot of soup in the kitchen, guests sitting in the living room can also smell the delicious smell of this pot of soup.

But why do guests smell it? Is this an inevitability?

The explanation given by physicists is that because the heating of the soup pot by the stove accelerates the thermal movement of the molecules, more and more aroma molecules overflow out of the pot and float to the living room, so that guests can smell the smell.

But why does heating a soup pot accelerate the thermal motion of molecules, rather than reducing it?

Physicists can only say that this is the result of thousands of observations, and that there are a large number of experimental phenomena that show that heating does accelerate the thermal motion of molecules, after all, physics is an experiment-based discipline.

However, in Hume's view, the conclusions drawn through observation, which is called "induction", are not very reliable.

For example, an English farmer keeps many sheep in captivity, and they feed the sheep in those pens on time at 8 a.m. every day.

Over time, a sheep scientist was born in the flock, and after a long period of observation and induction, he announced that he had come to the most correct scientific conclusion in the universe, that is, "every day at eight o'clock in the morning, the food appears in the trough on time".

However, the day after the sheep scientist announced the scientific conclusion, he did not see food in the trough at 8 a.m.

Because in the early hours of that day, the farmer arrested the sheep scientist and killed it.

There is another thing that also shows that observation does not necessarily lead to correct conclusions.

Before the discovery of black swans in Australia, everyone in the world except Australia thought that all swans were white, because the only swans that humans could observe at that time were white.

And in the theory of cause and effect, there is one of the most fatal questions, that is, "came first, or came first, or came first"?

Some people will say that because of the theory of evolution, the world's first chicken evolved from other animals, so it was the chicken that came first.

But it is also possible to use the theory of evolution to push this theory forward, for the kind of animal that eventually evolved into chickens, did this animal come first, or did it come first with the eggs of this animal?

It's the same with plants, is it the plant that comes first, or the seeds of the plant?

Even coming to the origin of life, single-celled organisms, skeptics of causality can ask similar questions, did single-celled organisms come first, or did they divide into single-celled organisms first?

Using the theory of cause and effect, we will never be able to explain this seemingly paradoxical conundrum.

Influenced by Hume, the grandfather of English philosophy, his disciples and grandchildren have always carried forward Hume's theory on the issue of causality.

Wittgenstein himself was one of them, and in his philosophical pamphlet Treatise on Logic and Philosophy, which he wrote during the First World War, he said: "We cannot extrapolate future events from present events." Believing in a causal connection is superstition. ”

Because he studied under Russell ,—— a macho man who spent more than 360 pages defining what "1" was,—— Wittgenstein also used logic to deny causality.

Wittgenstein believed that the world has no essence, only phenomena.

Phenomena are such things that can only be known about their existence if they have been experienced.

In other words, it is only through experience that phenomena can be recognized, and phenomena that do not involve the essence of research can only be regarded as summaries and statistics, and phenomena that have not been experienced are logical, and can only be experienced without experience, not non-existent.

The core of causality is that if there is a "cause", there will be an "effect", cause and effect are interrelated, and if there is a causal relationship in the real world, then the causal relationship must exist in the real world.

People know reality by experience.

But the "inevitability" of this empirical statistical result is, in Wittgenstein's philosophical theory, only statistical results.

It is not possible to use such statistical results, coupled with logical thinking, to deduce that phenomena that do not conform to causality do not exist.

Since it is not possible to deduce the existence of a cause and effect by logical relations, it means that the causal relationship also does not exist.

Wittgenstein never thought that Chen Muwu still knew something about the ideas in his book "Treatise on Logic and Philosophy", so he forgot that he had just asked Chen Muwu a few questions to challenge him when they first met.

Only then did Wittgenstein remember that Chen Muwu was also a person who had studied and made contributions to philosophy and mathematics, and an incompleteness theorem made Hilbert, the "king of mathematics", lose his armor.

So he began to excitedly talk to Chen Muwu about his views on causality:

"Dr. Chen, I personally do not reject the phenomenon of causality in the real world based on human experience, I just reject the feeling that because of this phenomenon, I think that it can be logically deduced that there is a causal relationship in the real world.

"I call things that can't be clearly expressed in logic 'things that can't be talked about,' and things that can be clearly expressed in logic are called 'things that can be talked about.'"

"The part that can be talked about can be left to scientists like you to study, and the part that cannot be talked about cannot be expressed logically, and scientists should be silent about this part.

"Obviously, the question of whether there is a causal relationship is something that cannot be talked about is in itself a matter that cannot be discussed, and it is natural that it should be kept silent.

"When people talk about cause and effect, it seems to me that it is a complete superstition."

The question of causality that Chen Muwu had just thrown out was like a match in a fuel reservoir full of gunpowder, which completely ignited Wittgenstein's passion for philosophical questions.

In this corner of the Apostolic Society, he gushed his eloquent arguments on the question of cause and effect.

At first, the people of the Apostolic Society were a little interested, because Wittgenstein was the first guest of the congregation today.

However, the more profound his words became, the more difficult they became, the more they forgot themselves, and the fewer people gathered here to listen to the small talk between Wittgenstein and Chen Muwu, and they left in twos and threes to continue talking about what they had just said.

In the end, only Ramsey, who introduced Wittgenstein to Chen Muwu today, was still by his side, and the thinking speed of his brain could barely keep up with the thinking speed of these two big guys.

"Dr. Chen, we've been talking about causality for dozens of minutes here, but what does this have to do with the topic just now?"

Seeing that Wittgenstein's explanation had come to an end, Ramsey asked his own question without a needle.

It seems that the initial question is always unavoidable.

Fortunately, Wittgenstein's speech just now had cleared many obstacles for Chen Muwu to answer this question, and he continued directly with the answer.

"I've emphasized many times before that whether it's the cat in a black box, or the universe splitting into two when observing, it's just a way to solve the phenomena we encounter in the real world.

"This is not to say that the laws of our real world are necessarily like this, but there is such a possibility.

As Mr. Wittgenstein said just now, these two views are only a summary of real experience, and cannot be regarded as an irrefutable truth.

"It's just that among physicists, there are many people who are big believers in causality, and they have always felt that the quantum mechanics that I and I proposed did not conform to causality. Therefore, although quantum mechanics can explain many physical phenomena relatively perfectly, it cannot be recognized by these people. Quantum mechanics is considered incomplete. ”

Chen Mu looked very aggrieved, as if he was bullied by those physicists who talked about "causality" every day.

However, he deliberately did not name these physicists, let alone one of them, who led the way, called Albert Einstein.

Hearing Chen Muwu say this, as a strong opponent of the "theory of cause and effect", Wittgenstein suddenly became interested.

"Dr. Chen, many years ago, I regret that the death of Professor Boltzmann prevented me from embarking on the path of physics research.

"It wasn't until today, when I met you at Cambridge University, that I began to regain my interest in physics.

"Can you recommend some books or papers on quantum mechanics? If I have time in the near future, I'm going to dig a little deeper and see if I can help you defeat the elders who insist on the theory of cause and effect. ”

Chen Muwu thinks Wittgenstein's words are very good, but don't say them next time.

Why compare yourself to Boltzmann?

In terms of greatness, Chen Muwu felt that he was not as good as Boltzmann, and there was no way for the two of them to be placed side by side.

In other aspects, Chen Muwu always felt as if Wittgenstein had inadvertently cursed himself, as if he also wanted him to commit suicide.

Chen Muwu has no objection to Wittgenstein's statement that he wants to read books on quantum mechanics.

Wittgenstein first wanted to study physics, then studied aeronautical engineering in Germany and Manchester, and was interested in mathematics in order to understand the shape of the propeller and figure out the most suitable propeller blade curve.

For this reason, he found a mathematics book on the British market, "Principia Mathematica", through which he met Russell, and came to Cambridge University to devote himself to Russell's discipleship.

Wittgenstein could understand the epic book "Principia Mathematica", which was just quantum mechanics, and Chen Muwu felt that it was naturally not a problem for him.

"Well, well, Mr. Wittgenstein, how long will you stay at Cambridge? I'll deliver the book tomorrow, should it be in time, right? ”

"No problem, but then I'm going to change my plans, stay in Cambridge for a few days, and if I see any questions in the book that I don't understand, I'll ask Dr. Chen for advice."

Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge not in 1927 but two years later, in 1929, when he was supposed to build a house in Vienna,—— and one of his sisters was afraid that she would become mentally ill after teaching in the Austrian mountains for several years, so she paid for the old man to design and supervise the construction of the house.

He was able to appear in the Apostolic Society this time, probably only by chance.

"I can't talk about asking for advice, but as long as there is a problem, I will definitely do my best, but can you give an answer."

"Dr. Chen, you are humble, quantum mechanics is a discipline founded by yourself, how can there be a problem that you don't understand?"

"Then I'll also put the ugly things first, the issues we discuss are limited to the physical level, and I can't accompany the deeper philosophical issues."

Just after saying two words about cause and effect, Chen Muwu was already dizzy.

If he hadn't had to be with Wittgenstein, he would have wanted to hide as far as the rest of the Apostolic Order did.

(End of chapter)