When I first became aware of the Uncertainty Principal lying at the base of quantum mechanics it bothered me. It seemed wrong to me that there would be fundamental limits on what the scientist would be allowed to know about the workings of the universe. Like most individuals who are familiar with the tenants of classical physics, I assumed the universe was just a complex clock and predicting its future was just a matter of understanding its workings sufficiently. But I kept my mind open and I am glad that I did, as I came to realize that there is an aspect of the classical deterministic model of the universe that if thought about, can be rather disturbing. If I am part of a deterministic universe, and if it can be predicted with absolute certainty, then so can I. And if I can be predicted with absolute certainty, then where is my free will? And if I have no free will, then where am I? Do I not just become a clog in the vast machine, are not even my thoughts preordained by the workings of the laws of physics, can I be said to even exist?

The uncertainty principal tells me that the present cannot be known with certainty, robing me of a launching pad from which to predict the future. The non-localized nature of matter prior to observation, and the fact that prior to being observed, its properties can only be predicted in terms of probabilities (as they are not determined) brings chance back into predicting the future. In these bizarre and obscure principals of quantum physics, I find at least the hint of a reprieve from the death sentence that certainty and a deterministic universe would have cast on any concept of an I. Of course, this does not fully restore my free will as it leaves me as the boat floating helplessly on an ocean, being pushed about by the winds of probabilities.

However, with the observer effect, we start to see a blending of the natural world out there and the internal world of the conscious observer. The separation between the subject and object blurs and we see that the universe is not just something independent of us, out there, waiting for us to observe it. On the contrary, the physical universe responds to the very act of observation. Even if that observation will not take place until the far distant future it still responds to cheat us of certainty. So we see that neither the present nor the future (or even the past for that matter) can be known with certainty. We see that at the foundations of the physical world, chance and probability play a fundamental role in how the future will unfold. And we see that our own consciousness affects the behavior of the universe.

There have been many experiments done that have tried to see if and how human intentions can influence the outcome of that probability and chance at the foundation of physical reality. While there have been some rather interesting results reported, as far as I am aware, from a scientific standard, the jury remains out, so I am free to believe what I like. I like to believe that at some level I have some say in how my future will play out. I may never come to understand how, or be able to control it to any large extent, but I like to think that what I think, and how I act, is more than just the workings of a complex clock, and that my future is not completely the results of random chance and probabilities.

In the idea that I have choice, I find life.