Consequently you might question what this higher-order cause might be, and it is a very good question to ask. Perhaps it is a very complicated cause to do with time. Time is one of the only things that links everything in the universe with everything else, among other theories of humans such as the idea of the three spacial dimensions. Perhaps, the pseudoscientific notion of biorhythms comes into play and means that each month the stars will be in certain positions and at the same time, purely on the basis of the regular rhythm of life, you will also be full of a certain hormone which makes you more likely to feel a certain way. In this sense looking at the stars to determine our fate is completely redundant, we may as well make less work for ourselves by analysing what time it is and our past history to determine a more accurate and less confusing view of why we might feel a certain way, rather than simply because 'the moon has passed close to the line of the equator'.
Everything in the world, and in the universe as a whole for that matter, obeys a regular rhythmic pattern dictated by the forces and objects around it. These ideas stem from the most basic physical principles we regard as 'most likely true based upon our current knowledge', and were discovered by scientists like Newton and Einstein among many many others. This is why we can predict the position of the earth at a certain time, or the position of another planet relative to the earth at that time. We would see it as strange to think that tomorrow Mars would suddenly, without reason, be moving much faster around the sun than it was today. We would have to see evidence for this, otherwise we would have to probably rethink the most basic, axiomatic principles governing the physical universe.
In fact this idea of these firstmost principles is very interesting. It is strange nowadays to use the word 'theory' to describe such things as gravity and atoms for example, since these 'theories' have become so well accepted, and seem so true that they are now almost always referred to as 'facts of life'. But of course, they are facts, but only in the realms of our own understanding. We have built other theories upon them and other theories came before them that they had to in some way agree with in order to be seen as credible. But the limit of our ability to test theories we make to determine whether they are true or not comes when we hit the barrier of what we are able to observe by any means about the universe around us. If we could in some way 'observe' time in some way then I am sure we would have a very different system of physics at the present moment. However much you think about it physics is at its roots a human explanation for something we do not fully understand and possibly never will. Just because something seems to fit, however well, with our understanding, in actuality it is never good enough to be regarded as real 'fact' since somewhere along the line, often at the very beginning we had to make an assumption, or a 'given statement' such as "all things fall down on earth". What is to say that they do? All that we have to observe is five basic senses at the end of it (not even in agreement with the number of recommended senses for something to be objective and not simply down to mere coincidence), and to be honest those alone will never be good enough to say for certain that all things fall down, or in fact that the objects and systems we interact with in everyday life are really what we see them as. At the end of it they are only viewed from our biased points of view. So where does the real truth lie? Well, in actual fact until the real truth - if there is one - is discovered for certain we have to believe every theory to be true in its own right, however crazy it might sound, since at the end of it everything is still only subjective to how credible we as a population think it to be, and that never equals certainty. For now however, I suppose our theories about life, mathematics, the universe and everything are all in actual fact true, since the concept of truth is, if you think about it, as much of a human invention as anything else. It belongs to the concept of logic and lies within the same thought system as Newton's laws of motion, Einstein's theory of relativity and the laws of thermodynamics and so all these things are true in that sense.
Coming back to my original idea about fate, there is a flaw in cause and effect - that is expressed as the very weird and wonderful notion of the human brain and consciousness. If everything, as most people believe it does, follows the currently accepted physical laws, then true randomness is in theory impossible, since everything must follow a rigid and structured system. By these premises that must mean that human thought is simply a direct result of the atoms and chemicals in our brains interacting with electrical signals in a complicated yet theoretically predictable manner meaning that fate has always been decided for us. This would also mean that if we were able to computer-generate a model of a human brain at a specific moment in time with every detail included, and programmed it using all the physical laws then this should mean the brain would work almost exactly as that of the person who's 'brain snapshot' was taken (this is a similar notion to modelling the atmosphere to predict the weather), give or take a few differences resulting from the absence of the external factors the person was subjected to: stimuli. But these differences are of course very important since in the long run they might add up to make for completely different paths of events. Of course, these stimuli would theoretically come from other predictable physical events and objects causing them which in theory could also be programmed into the computer. But of course these stimuli were in theory caused by other stimuli and so on and so forth until eventually you realise that to obtain an accurate model of what that person's brain would be doing at a certain time you would need to program the entire universe into the computer. Now, here comes the big problem - what about the computer itself, it of course is an external stimulus and part of the universe, so how do we program it into the equation? Well, as you may have guessed you would now need an infinite number of computer simulations each inside of one another to do this, much as you get with two mirrors placed in front of each other forming an infinite number of images within one another, which of course is impossible. But perhaps there is some truth in this: perhaps we ourselves are just one of an infinite number of sub and meta universes each inside each other in a never-ending chain. However, as we have seen with this theoretical computer simulation of the universe, there is perhaps a beginning. What could this beginning be? God perhaps? Well, again we are jumping to conclusions - my theory could possibly be false from it's very origins and therefore further reasoning would be futile, but it could just as well be true for all anyone knows. In a sense it is actually true by definition in the strange way I described before - true just as every other theory is. It just goes to show that seeing isn't actually believing, but the other way round. If you believe something, then it true by your own definition since the universe is a very, very relative place. What might be true for you may not be true for others. Because of my computer argument I can see how fate might simultaneously exist and not exist. To predict it all you would need would be a brain of infinite capacity - God as some might describe it. You might say this is impossible, but of course so was motion according to Zeno of Elea in his Achilles and the Tortoise paradox. What is impossible for someone may not be in another situation or train of thought for reasons that people are still trying to understand. That, I believe, is one of the beauties of life and consciousness.
Credit to Wikipedia for this image of an extract from the page on axioms... Just something to think about, is this truly true?
Credit to Godel Escher Bach among other things for inspiring me to write this article.
