The purpose of this research is to examine certain relationships between the conception of material reality in modern physics and Taoism. The plan of the research will be to set forth the philosophical context in which physics and Taoism have been considered together, and then to discuss the details of intersection between these two seemingly disparate disciplines.
To see how 20th-century physics relates to Taoism, which essentially dates from the life and writings of Laotse (born 571 B.C.),1 it is necessary to explore how the development of theoretical physics in modern Western culture appears to have uncovered affinities with the more ancient culture of the East. The connections have entered the popular culture since the 1970s, notably with the publication of Zukav's Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics in 1979, and Capra's The Tao of Physics in 1976. However there is evidence that initial connections of this type were being made as early as the 1940s, following on the practical application in the West of the theory of relativity by Einstein, which deals with the atomic structure and function of matter.
The philosophical attitude implicit in Einstein's special theory of relativity embraces the validity of Newtonian quantification of scientific theory according to mathematical laws,2 but it also overtakes the philosophical determinism based on an uncritical acceptance of the Newtonian universe.3 Atomic theory, which led to quantum physics, is most complex, but what it comes down to is that all matter, whether organic or inorganic, and including light, is made up of particles called atoms that are in constant motion.4 The motion of such particle has been described as a "cosmic dance,"5 and it is the same kind of dance that Zukav refers to in The Dancing Wu Li Masters.
One implication of the fact that light is made up of particles is that matter is in motion and therefore presumably unstable in some way...