This blog post explores the possibility of time travel and predicting the future from the perspectives of scientific theory and human free will.
Most people have probably imagined time travel at least once during their childhood. Questions like ‘I want to go back in time and see dinosaurs in person’ or ‘How will people live in the future?’ often led us to lose ourselves in a world of boundless imagination. However, as we grow up, we move away from these fanciful imaginings and focus on more practical matters. Yet the concept of the ‘future’ remains deeply embedded in our thoughts. Whether distant or near, we consciously prepare for the present while anticipating the time ahead, dreaming of a better life as we move toward the future. But what if the future we’re racing toward is already predetermined—an irreversible, one-way path? What if a fixed future, like destiny, awaits us regardless of our choices and actions?
Since Newtonian mechanics, scientists have believed the world moves according to certain laws. This belief gave rise to the idea that if we knew the laws explaining all natural phenomena, we could predict future outcomes. For example, if a person releases a ball held in their hand, the ball will naturally fall downward. We know the law of gravity that pulls the ball toward Earth and the law that states a force applied to an object accelerates it in that direction. Therefore, we can predict the ball’s motion. While this principle is a simple example, the belief that the world operates according to various scientific laws and that precisely understanding these laws allows us to foresee future events has long dominated human thought.
Since the Industrial Revolution, science and technology have advanced dramatically, and many scientists believed the laws of nature could predict the future. Research flourished across fields like physics, chemistry, and biology, uncovering diverse scientific principles applicable to human life. Modern science even attempts to scientifically understand emotions and behavior by analyzing neural activity and nervous system responses within the human brain. These studies ultimately fostered the hope that even human emotions and behavior could become predictable. That is, human actions too are determined by scientific laws. This belief that ‘the future can be understood through scientific laws’ dominated the thinking of scientists and the public until the early 20th century, reinforcing a deterministic worldview.
However, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, published in 1927, brought significant change to this deterministic worldview. The Uncertainty Principle revealed that not all objects move perfectly according to scientific laws; they possess unmeasurable errors and uncertainties. This means the position and momentum of any object cannot be precisely measured simultaneously, and the result can only be predicted probabilistically. Consequently, while we can still predict the future using known laws in localized situations, uncertainty grows as time progresses or the scope of prediction widens, making precise future prediction impossible. Thus, predictions about the future became lost in a labyrinth. Unless science overcomes the limits of uncertainty, we cannot know the future with certainty.
Where does humanity’s desire to predict the future come from? The reason is that our lives are intimately connected to the future. Everyone harbors hopes and fears about the approaching future, and the uncertainty surrounding it significantly influences our present choices. If we could know the future in advance, we might prepare for unforeseen dangers or act strategically to steer the future in our desired direction. Ironically, however, this vague longing for future prediction often leads to anxiety and confusion.
The film Minority Report intriguingly explores this dilemma of predicting the future. In the movie, Agatha (Samantha Morton) is a psychic with the ability to foresee the future, and her precognition is used by the police to prevent crimes before they occur. The protagonist, John Anderton (Tom Cruise), learns through Agatha’s prophecy that he will become a criminal in the future and tries to escape that fate. However, the event he tried to prevent ultimately occurs. In the final scene, Lama Burgess (Max von Sydow), despite possessing foresight into the future, gains the opportunity to alter his destiny through his own choices. The film presents a situation where human free will is put to the test the moment the future is known, conveying the message that it is not the future that is predetermined, but human thought and choice.
This story poses an important question for us as well. Does our desire to know the future truly bring happiness and peace? Or is it merely a factor that amplifies unnecessary anxiety and stress? While knowing what will happen in advance and preparing for it can sometimes be helpful, the predicted future does not necessarily unfold exactly as foreseen. In fact, if the events we sought to know beforehand turn out differently than expected, the disappointment can be far greater. Rather than striving to know an uncertain future, accepting that the future unfolds anew with each moment may offer us peace of mind.
The very fact that the future is indeterminate actually grants us greater freedom. It is crucial that we live faithfully in the present, within a future that is not predetermined but constantly changing based on our own choices and efforts. Instead of worrying about bad things happening, isn’t a life filled day by day with the positive mindset that tomorrow will bring good things the true essence of happiness? Letting go of the desire to predict the future and living in anticipation of tomorrow, which has yet to come, will enrich our lives.
