The Quantum Nietszche

©Copyright 1998 William G. Plank. All rights reserved

From: http://www.msubillings.edu/modlang/bplank/quantumnietzsche.htm

Part I Part II Part III Part IV

21. Planck's constant.

In trying to figure out what we can know about the objects of our perceptions and our perceptions themselves, it is useful to know about Planck's constant. Classical mechanics assumed that electromagnetic radiation could be given off at any frequency and in any quantity, no matter how small. However, Max Planck, in his work on black body radiation (heat radiation) in 1900 calculated mathematically that electromagnetic radiation must be given off in discrete quantities if the observed behavior of such radition is to make sense. The energy (E) of such radiation must be equal to the frequency of the associated wave process of the radiation times a constant which he calculated to be about 6.6 x 10-34 joule seconds, written as E = hv, in which h has become known as Planck's constant. It was "eventually found to characterize the whole atomic world; h plays the same importance in the atomic world as the speed of light c plays in the world of special relativity" (Rohrlich, p. 128).

In 1924, Louis de Broglie noted that "the energy of an electromagnetic wave equalled the magnitude of its momentum p times the speed of light c:E = pc " (Hodgson, p. 217 and ff.). He then combined Planck's formula (E = hv) with other formulae in order to relate (in the descrption of a photon) momentum (p), wave length of the associated wave process (l), and the speed of light (c) in the following manner: p = hv/c = h/l

The impact of this conclusion is to demonstrate that energy cannot be transferred in any quantity smaller than h and that energy thus comes in its tiniest jolt in the discrete quantity expressed by Planck's constant. This does not seem to be relevant to anything at hand, particularly Nietzsche, until we combine it with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. It is also a little embarrassing to people who would deny unitization, but remember our discussion of the "logic of sense" (the title of one of Deleuze’s books, by the way, emphasizing again the presence of Nietzsche in the work of Deleuze).

22. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

It becomes clear that perception is not a disinterested and independent act when it comes to the principles of physics, or to anything else for that matter. In order to register a photon in the above double-slit experiment, for example, we had to have a photon and that photon had to interact with the photographic plate. The photographic plate "consumed" a photon, so to speak. Measurement and perception are not independent realities separate from the rest of the universe, they are interactions with the external world which by that very interaction change the very thing they purport to perceive or measure. Thus (a) measurment consumes energy, (b) the least possible quantum of energy is h , therefore (c) measurement will consume at least the discrete amount of energy defined by Planck's constant. We can never exactly measure the thing we are measuring because we always change it, there is thus always some uncertainty involved in the measurement. In rather simple-minded terms, you cannot tell how fast you are going on your bicycle because the speedometer slows you down a tiny bit, so that the speedometer reading is a combination of the operation of the speedometer and the speed of the bicycle. Measurement always requires some interchange of energy with the measuring apparatus. "After all, if no energy is interchanged, then nothing would have changed in the measuring apparatus" (Peat, p. 42). There is no such thing as a fraction of a quantum because its size is constant (Planck's constant). [Such constants as h and c could be somewhat embarrassing to Nietzsche's concept of total flux and the Will to Power because they take on the nature of absolutes--but that is a problem for another section. They suggest that what the mind may intellectually divide up into infinite pieces, Nature cannot, and that, in effect, Nature does not act like the mind or vice versa.] What strikes me as extraordinary in the above is that we have succeeded in relating a constant of quantified energy, the speed of light, frequency and wave length of electromagnetic radiation, momentum, the nature of measurement, and the general problem of perception. We are able to see the observer, his instruments, and the world (at least the quantum world) as an intimately related whole, and we can see that, if all's right with the world, and if the quantum world is really there, then we are always going to make a mistake of at least the magnitude of h.

23. The Copenhagen Group.

The Copenhagen group (Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli) drew the extreme conclusions from quantum phenomena. Going beyond the idea that measurement alters the quantum event, Max Born's colleague Pascual Jordan declared that they produce it. "...the electron is forced to a decision. We compel it to assume a definite position; previously it was, in general, neither here nor there, it had not yet made its decision for a definite position....We ourselves produce the results of the measurement" (quoted by Peat, p. 63). The act of measuring is an indissoluble unification of instrument and event. There is no separate atomic reality and no separate event. For Heisenberg, the reality was in the mathematical demonstration (v. Peat, p. 64). Bohr said, "There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum mechanical description" (Peat, p. 65). Bohr proposed the idea of complementarity, i.e., in short, that if we want to measure waves we will find a valid description of waves; if we want to measure particles, we will find a valid measurement of particles. We can come to the point of dealing with an electron which is a particle and a wave, too, a particle which is distributed and discrete at the same time, which is localized and wavelike, which is somewhere and nowhere at the same time, which is somewhere only when we grab it in flight so to speak, like dice which do not read anything as they fly across the table or tumble in the cage and will never read anything until we stop their movement (artificially), until we destroy their movement and falsify the nature of the dice by getting an illusion of measurement and reading.

The Copenhagen point of view is not merely a rejection of a concrete reality, it is even the assertion that the concept of a concrete utlimate reality on which we may perform enlightened and adjusted measurements is not even necessary. It is the assertion that the movement of the holistic flux and the participation in that flux by a product of consciousness which is mathematics...that that is sufficient. Let us remember that Nietzsche felt that the operation of the Will to Power in the flux, the Will to Power which is flux, was sufficient in the search for the relational "truth" and the joy of existence, the dance of the Overman in the knowledge of the Eternal Recurrence who knew the true nature of the Will to Power which created the scene for relational and new configurations at the creation of each new relational configuration. Thus Nietzsche rejected substance for these very reasons--substance was a falsification of the nature of the flux.

It is the body itself and the priority of its existence for accurate or inaccurate judgment which, according to Nietzsche, creates the model for spatially separate objects. The body, perceiving itself as separate, forces this model of separateness on the rest of the universe. The reality of the universe for Nietzsche is the interrelation of forces (Schacht's preferred term is "energy centers") and it is this interaction of forces which produces our sensations, one of which is the conviction of the reality of objects. The universe is not a question of objects operating on one another over a distance.

That is to say, except in our ordinary intellectual interpretation, there is no spatial separation between the bodily sense-organ and the object it senses. The body is not distinct from what it can sense; its domain interpenetrates with the domains of other forces of which it is aware (Moles, p. 250).

The holism of the above Nietzschean concept about the nature of sensation is consistent with the Copenhagen school's assertion about the nature of the relation between data and the observer (see also sect. 47). That is to say, our sense perceptions create the data by the very nature of the observation.

Now, this un-Platonist, anti-idealist quantum theory of the Copenhagen group was disturbing to another great thinker who yearned to know the nature of universal reality, and for that reason held on to the hope that there is a concrete reality which may be known, even if it means adjusting the measurments made on that reality by equations which reflect velocity, the relations of inertial systems, the position of the observer, etc., and that thinker was Albert Einstein. His efforts to maintain the credibility of a concrete reality led him and his colleagues to a thought-experiment which has become known as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) experiment. We must consider this idea briefly in order to understand Bell's theorem, which takes off from the EPR, and which is the first of the quantum theoretical ideas to be borne out by laboratory experiment. We may then consider David Bohm's quantum potential and relate it to the idea of the Will to Power, a connection made in the last section of this book.

24. The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen thought-experiment.

Einstein held onto the idea that there is a reality which may finally be describable by science, even if that science has to make adjustments for the relative position of the observer, for the relations of inertial frames of reference, or for a universe which is geometrized in the general theory of relativity (GTR). We may call this point of view "Einsteinian realism." I would say that Einstein was unwilling to draw the ultimate conclusions of flux and I would insist that Nietzsche and the Copenhagen group were indeed willing to draw the extreme conclusions of flux, provided they knew what they were. The EPR thought-experiment is an effort to get around the problem that we can never know reality because measurement changes that reality. The EPR gedankenexperiment may be summarized very succinctly: Allow two identical systems to synchronize. Then separate them and measure one of them only. It is admitted that measurement will change the system you measured, but it allows you to draw conclusions about the other identical system which you did not change because you did not measure it. Peat dramatizes the problem (p. 77 ff.) by telling the story of twin brothers, one of whom may be painfully and destrucively coerced into revealing his secrets, thus providing information about the other, who had not been discomfited. EPR thus hoped to demonstrate the possibility of measuring the velocity and position of a particle without destroying the possibility of measuring the velocity and position of the particle. It was a little like measuring the presence of a photon without having it hit a photographic plate. For Bohr, the EPR simply begged the question since there was no such thing as the "real" position of a particle in the first place and it made no sense to talk about the simultaneous velocity and position of a particle and, in fact, it made no sense to talk about independent reality at all. Since one cannot know ultimate reality anyway, it is a waste of time to talk about it. Bohr felt that the quantum world is only "an abstract mathematical description." Heisenberg said, "Atoms or the elementary particles are not real..." And Jordan"We ourselves produce the results of measurement" (Peat, p. 85).

25. John Bell.

John Bell, however, a designer of elementary particle accelerators at the CERN near Geneva, figured out a way to test whether or not a quantum explanation is more accurate than an explanation based on classical mechanics. His theorem may not resolve the problem of whether there is an independent reality or not, of whether what we believe to be quantum mechanics is just an abstract mathematical description, or whether it is actually we who create our own results. Nevertheless, taking the EPR model as an inspiration, he was the first to figure out an experimental way to demonstrate that a holistic quantum description has validity over classical mechanics, and that local reality may not be a valid way of thinking about particles, thus giving support to the doubts placed on linear cause and effect, etc., indeed lending urgency and respectability to all the questions we listed above in the section "Questions of Quantum Theory."

26. Bell's Theorem.

In order to understand how Bell's laboratory apparatus works, it is necessary to understand how one can distinguish electrons from one another. On the one hand we may say that each electron has an "up" spin or a "down" spin, and that therefore these electrons may be identified in a spin-detector (Peat, p. 93 ff.). On the other hand, a convinced quantum physicist might say that by measuring an electron for an "up" spin, we create it as an electron with "up" spin.

Let us imagine the apparatus as it was set up in David Bohm's version. Consider that in the middle of a large laboratory an electron source shoots off an electron to the left, where it is registered by spin-detector A, at the far end of the lab. At the same time, the source shoots off an electron to the right, where it is detected by spin-detector B at the opposite end. The readings from spin-detectors A and B are then compared at a counter at C. Since there are only two kinds of electrons, up and down, and since the choice of whether the electron will be up or down is totally random, the 50-50 chance of whether an electron will be up or down is borne out when a large number of electrons is fired off. We saw the same behavior in Eigen's glass bead games. In addition, these paired electrons are correlated so that if one flies off to the right with an "up" spin, the other flies off to the left with a "down" spin, and vice versa. (The experiment may also be described in terms of polarity.) There will therefore be a 100% correlation between the readings at A and B--when A is up, B is down. We can therefore always predict what will happen at A by looking at B, and vice versa. It appears we have set up a fine experiment showing the validity of the EPR, whereby we may predict the behavior of one system by observing another. This 100% correlation is explained by the indeterminism of quantum theory, but it is also explained by the local reality theory, which is what the EPR was all about. By "local reality," in the simplest possible terms, we mean that there are real things which exist before we measure them. Peat dramatizes the experiment with twins who always choose different colored hats, so that when you see one twin, you always know what color hat the other is wearing. One could do the same thing with twins, one of whom was a boy and the othe a girl. In that case, every time you saw one of the twins, no matter in what part of the universe he/she was, you would always know the gender of the absent one.

It appears that up to this point we have not learned very much. However, according to the local reality theory, Jack is always male and Jill is always female quite simply because reality is local, that being the nature of things, and they will be male and female no matter where they are-- so that we would never have to communicate with the absent twin in order to determine his/her gender. Things are what they are and that is all there is to it. So just because we see that there is a correlation between two distant things, it does not mean that they are communicating with each otherJack does not have to communicate with Jill in order to verify his own gender and an electron does not have to know what another is doing to be up or down.

Bell's alteration of the apparatus brings in some complexity. So long as the detectors were aligned, we saw a 100% correlation, for every up at A there was a down at B, and vice versa. But if one of the detectors is turned slightly so that it is out of alignment with the first, then 99% of the electrons will register "up," and 1% "down" at that detector. Move the detector out of alignment a little more and it registers 80% up and when it is moved all the way to 180 degrees, they all go down. It is obvious that the probability depends on the angle of the detectors. Parallel orientation gave 100% correlation, but 180 degrees rotation reverses what happens at the detector, and 90 degrees rotation means that 50% of electrons go up, 50% go down at that detector. So far, so good. The situation appears reasonable since the probability becomes a function of the angle of rotation.

But the problem lies in the fact that when the detectors are no longer perfectly oriented, the correlation begins to change When we get an up at A, we would expect to get a down at B--but occasionally when we get an up at A we also get an up at B! The more the detectors are rotated the lower the correlation becomes. So what? you may ask. You can immediately see that it no longer becomes possible to predict from system A what is happening at system B. It is a little as if we saw Jill in Paris one sunny day in May and had to telephone Jack in New York to find out whether he was male or female and on occasion found out that he was wearing high heels.

If we rotate the detectors until they are at right angles to one another there is no correlation at all. If we invert one detector in relation to the other, the correlation is reversed. We are no longer able to rely on the local reality concept in which an up-spin is what it is and a down-spin is what it is, in which so to speak Jack is always male and Jill is always female. We must look at the problem from the quantum point of view, calculating the probability of the correlation for each angle of orientation. Experiments confirm that the correlation is equal to the negative cosine of the angle between the detectors (v. Peat, p. 105). If we stick to the idea of local reality, we would have to posit the existence of hidden variables in the reaction between the respective detector and its electron, variables which we did not know and could only surmise about as we explained that things took place that we could not predict but that we hoped someday to be able to explain once we had revealed yet a deeper level of reality.

The point to be retained in all this is that the explanation is not local but that it resides in the holism of the relation of the two detectors together, in fact, within the whole apparatus--including the observer. Jarret sums it up quite succinctly"The claim is that we have strong empirical evidence (I repeat--strong empirical evidence that no local realistic theory is true of our world" (Cushing and McMullin, p. 68) (Jarret’s emphasis). Jarret emphasizes the amazement with which physicists treat Bell’s theorem "...it is quite natural...to feel that the argument is so simple that the reasoning which leads from it to the claim that the evidence for something so strange and wonderful...turns on the value of one rather mundane experimentally measured quantity exceeding another must be a swindle" (Ibid). In terms of Abner Shimony’s remark about quantum as "experimental metaphysics," it is no exaggeration to state that we have just seen empirically the demise of the metaphysical concept of substance.

The importance of this experiment and the rather long-winded description of it is that for the first time some concrete experiment has been able to cast doubt on explantions based on local reality. An apologist for the local reality theory would have to marshall data from detector A which had nothing to do with detector B or its environment because what happens at detector A reflects the "real" reality of the electron as it exists in its true essence. But the cosine of the angles of orientation of the detectors cannot be broken apart into some putative local reality. We find ourselves in a position in which the particles arriving at detectors A and B can always be described by the cosine of the angle of the detectors but cannot be predicted by the idea of local reality. Since the cosine cannot be factored into separate terms, the quantum explantion must by necessity be different from any mathematical construct trying to make a prediction based on local reality.

In a final check on the accuracy of local reality theory vs quantum theory, Bell took two correlation readings and compared them. That is, first he established a correlation between the detectors at one angle of orientation. Then he established a correlation between the detectors at another angle. Finally, he compared the correlations, i.e., he made a correlation of the correlations. The local reality theory (i.e., that in which A and B have no communication and exchange no signal, in which they are separate local realities) obviously has the possiblilty of no correlation at all, total correlation, or a correlation somewhere in betwen. That is, for each set of data there is the possibility for zero correlation (-1) or 100% correlation (+1). The two sets of readings providing the range of correlations for the local reality theory thus range between -2 and +2. However, when calculations are made for the two sets of correlations made by the quantum mode, i.e., using the cosine of the angles of orientation of the detectors, a procedure which welds the whole apparatus into a holism and gives the real and measureable orientation of the detectors, then we get a different result. Using the angle of 45• the correlation is at a maximum of 2.83! Although the quantum correlation itself may vary with the angle of orientation of the detectors, we can see that the local reality theory could not produce a correlation greater than +2. "In other words, the quantum world is more highly correlated than any world that depends on a local reality or locally operating hidden variables. Quantum theory predicts a sort of nonclassical correlation" (Peat, p. 112). The amazing thing about this is that Bell has succeeded in demonstrating that a local reality, measured against itself, is of less predictive value than a holistic point of view. Treating A and B separately produces an expected classical reality correlation, but treating A and B holistically produces a higher quantum correlation number.

Bell's experiment was later done with 200 hours of events using polarized photons the results show that the theory of local reality cannot be consistent with nature (v. Peat, p. 116). Alain Aspect at the University of Paris in the early 1980's repeated the experiment with an apparatus which guaranteed that the detectors could not communicate by making the readings so quickly that even the speed of light would not have been rapid enough to ensure the correlation of the detectors. Aspect proposed using light from a distant star to cause vibrations in a liquid which would switch photons in the detectors so rapidly there could not be any "collusion" of local reality between the detectors. Surely what happened in a distant galaxy could not have a connection with his laboratory in Paris, unless "the whole universe is itself some giant intelligence that conspires to preserve the illusion of a quantum nonlocality" (Peat, p. 121). I suggest that, although "conspires" and "intelligence" deserve their scare quotes, the Nietzschean Will to Power answers the bill--about which more later.

27. David Bohm.

Curiously, David Bohm's idea of a quantum potential shows us a "constant flux of fields that enfold and unfold to produce the various phenomena of physics" (Peat, p. 147). For Bohm, real electrons are affected by the introduction of a new force, a "quantum potential" or "guide wave." This quantum potential is a cosmic force which does not "fall off" or grow weaker with distance but guides the real particle electron along its path as it undergoes the unpredictably complex mechanical pushes and pulls of the electromagnetic fields it encounters, as it gives the impresion of wave behavior. One wonders if the concept of such a force is necessary to describe the flux, just as one wonders if the Will to Power is not occasionally a deceptive term to describe the recombinative, holistic nature of the universe. Now we must return to Nietzsche and contemplate in what way the Nietzschean holism of the Will to Power and the holism of quantum mechanics provide a similar intuition about the nature of things. Certainly there is no intention here of making Nietzsche into a prophet of modern mathematical physics or a forerunner of quantum mechanics. But there is indeed an intention here to express my wonder that Nietzsche's rejection of idealism's reality of forms should have provided him with intuitions which are so closely consonant with the ideas of cause and effect of modern physics. I believe that the similarity of views about such things between Nietzsche and quantum physics is the result of the resolute rejection of the prescriptive ontology and metaphysics of classical Greece and the willingness to put into question even the basic notions of reality, of time, space, consciousness, cause and effect--notions we have already seen in the discussions of the Will to Power and the notion of time. I have just repeated here the conclusion with which I introduced this definition of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics therefore states that things cannot exist before they are measured, that the universe is so constructed that reality is not a question of things which are measured by an external "impartial" observer, but that the nature of the universe is such that an event is an inextricable unity of the thing observed, the observer, and the equipment. This is a quantum event, i.e., a quantum state. Reality is a question of quantum states. There is a sense in which it is correct to say that the moon is not there when Einstein is not looking at it.

. At this point therefore, I will consider the project of defining quantum mechanics sufficient to proceed, although I will occasionally belabor the point. We may now at least use the terminology and references to deal with the problems of Nietzsche. Nevertheless, we are not through with David Bohm. After a longer look at Nietzsche and how he may be used to understand the problems of evolution, of literary and intellectual history, we will be able to put Bohm’s efforts to deal with the philsophical implication of quantum mechanics into a broader perspective. That discussion will occupy section 128, which will be more meaningful if the reader waits for it. So don’t go thumbing around to find out the dénouement!

28. Substance: Nietzsche, Evolution, Physics: A transition to Michael Ruse.

The very beginning, the very origin of Nietzsche's thought lies in his rejection of substance. Captured in the trap of human language, Nietzsche is reduced to using the term spirit, geist, as the principal appelation to characterize the course of fluxial events. The term "spirit" has however been conditioned, restricted and debased in its meaning by generations of religionists, romantics, and idealist philosophers; we must not be deceived by Nietzsche's use of it. Nor must we be deceived by his rejection of substance into thinking that his philosophy is one of mere spirit elevated to some kind of universal consciousness in which we conscious beings participate, some kind of Hegelian universal spirit.

Because Nietzsche rejected substance, he was forced therefore to reject simplistic ideas of linear causality as well as the idea of unitized time (another absolutist idea) and traditional ideas of space. Modern relativity has likewise had to reject a common-sense view of space and time in the concept of space-time, and quantum mechanics throws into question linear causality. We can begin to see to what extent we suffer from the pre-existing definitions of our language, definitions which preserve the metaphysical convictions of millenia.

29. Substance does not mean mere matter.

When Nietzsche rejected substance, he was not merely rejecting matter, in fact he was not rejecting matter at all. His rejection of substance does not mean that Nietzsche was an idealist or some kind of vitalist. And the fact that he was not rejecting matter per se does not mean that he was a materialist, and if we think so it is because we have such trouble in conceiving anything that cannot be categorized as materialist or idealist, so much are we the children of the Socratic Judaeo-Christian metaphysic. He was rejecting the idea of matter-as-substance, i.e., as a rigidly existing and therefore unchangeable atomic building block of reality. It is not necessary, therefore, to insist on referring to the configurations of the Will to Power as "energy centers" etc., as long as we understand that Nietzsche had a special definition for the substance he rejected. In the same way he rejected such a rigid and constricting idea of substance, he likewise rejected the Platonist form, the Idea. Had he not rejected substance along with his rejection of the Idea, then all he would have done would have been to surreptitiously transfer the patterns of Platonism to the level of a materialism and left intact the notion of a substance and a stasis which would have effectively frustrated the notion of the Will to Power as flux. What we have to understand in the case of Nietzsche is that what we have for so long called materialism has been especially the static (i.e., in the sense of stasis, i.e., non-fluxial) aspect of the equally static (in the sense of stasis) Idealism. Our materialism has been the metaphysics of our sense of touch and sight and emphasizes what I will later show to be the visual origin of our identity and Derrida's theory of écriture [when I discuss the metaphysical implications of our notion of animal language.] The concept of substance is just superfluous to the Nietzschean sensism. Our traditional materialism has been the transference of the static aspects of Idealism to the level of matter, by which we thought we were rejecting Platonism and achieving some kind of scientific posture. We owe it first to Nietzsche to see that materialism is not the synonym for science, an intuition which is driven home to us by the implications of quantum mechanics. No wonder Marx was able to find an inevitability and even a predictability in the behaviour of the career of materialism; no wonder he could qualify it as "scientific," and no wonder Marx owes so much to Hegel that he has been characterized as "bringing Hegel down to earth." For if we understand Marx and Hegel in the light of Nietzschean thought then Marx certainly brought Hegel down to earth--in the thin disguise of a materialist who replaced the realization of universal spirit with the dictatorship of the proletariat--another examaple of the "Cyranien transfer" (the magic act discussed in. sect. 121). Thus, Nietzsche's rejection of socialism is based on more than just a moralistic condemnation of some preservation and apotheosis of the herd-man mentality. A rigid and durable matter-as-substance preserves the same notion of ontological reality as the eternal Idea in the mind of God and it stymies and frustrates the flux in just as certain a manner as Platonism, as the Socratic Judaeo-Christian metaphysic. Our materialism has been a diguised idealism because that materialism preserved the ideas of substance that spun off from idealism. We transferred that ultimate reality from the Platonist Ideal to the materially and substantially real. [Such a transferral is not uncommon in the history of philosophyWe see Sartre in Existentialism is a Humanism accusing the atheists of preserving Christian morality by such a transference; we see Benoist accusing Sartre (empirico-transcendentalist!) of transferring and preserving the metapysics of presence in the priority Sartre gives to the subjectivity.] Nietzsche was the first to see that such an idea of substance is merely a disguised Platonism and that it must be thrown out with the Idea, that the atom as the ultimately real is the equivalent of the Idea as the ultimately real. Nietzsche was able to see God lurking behind the atom.

30. There can be no ultimately real in the flux.

There can be no ultimately real in the flux any more than there can be any ultimately real in the evolutionary. [Remember, however, our previous difficulties with the speed of light and Planck's constant (v. section 22), and Eigen's remark that only the rules of the game are open to objective understanding (v. section 1).] The ultimately real is such a hold-over from idealism in materialism that allowed Lévi-Strauss to write in his Structural Anthropology that he believed that when the ultimate truth was finally found, it would be in the structures of matter. We will later see that Magnus (1978, pp. 66 ff.) likewise catches himself in the snare of linear common sense to the extent that he criticizes the idea of the Eternal Recurrence from the point of view that it would be difficult to determine which was the original configuration of the Will to Power of which successive recurrences were the instance, thus positing in a Platonist mode the notion of a real reality, and exposing himself to answering questions about creation and origins and eschatology. The Will to Power thus is very basically an ontological intuition which Nietzsche very visibly struggles to express in the prejudiced vocabulary of human language and its built-in ontology. It is thus no accident that Nietzsche exhorts us to read him carefully, that he insists on the deceptiveness of language (one of the better lessons that Derrida learned from Nietzsche and then perverted it). To understand the basic intuition of the Will to Power is very difficult because we have become accustomed to thinking in terms of energy and matter, space and time. Nietzsche makes a mess of all these prejudices about energy, matter, space, and time for the same reason that the Copenhagen school of quantum mechanics claimed that quantum reality is a creation of measurement and observation (that is, the concept of flux carried to its logical conclusion demands such similar conclusions about the nature of perception and its relation to space, time, causality, etc.), except that Heisenberg and company were not prepared to give a name to the new ontology of flux (i.e., the Will to Power), even though the behavior of sub-atomic particles casts great doubt on the atom as ultimate reality--an idea Nietzsche had already had in a certain sense. And Einstein, in his genius and in his passion for realism, clung to a revision of the old realism by finding the equation to relate matter and energy and in the concept of space-time. Space-time as a concept may be interpreted in the light of Nietzsche's work as a stop-gap concept in the final crumbling of our traditional ideas of space and time, causality, location, etc., all of which are the domain of quantum physics. Nietzsche attempted to avoid the danger of the ultimately real, which would arrest the flux of the Will to Power, by describing the Will to Power as an interrelated perspectival finitude of forces which defined and were cooexistent with their spaces and which were constantly discharging communicational quanta of energy which affected the energy level and therefore the momentary nature of the perspective of each one of these perspectival energy centers. Thus, nothing is ever still, the configurations of the Will to Power constantly change.