During a number of trips through Mammoth Cave with college students, I stood with my charges beneath the ceiling of the large Rotunda, a room covering about two acres. The Rotunda serves as an initial stopping point for tourists, a place for a park ranger to explain the “false” saltpeter [(Ca(NO3)2)] mining that provided one of the three essential components to make gunpowder that Americans used to fight the British during the War of 1812.* The tourists then proceed downward into the cavern. Now, if you haven’t been to the cavern, note here that it is, in fact, “mammoth.” Just past the Rotunda the cave opens into a passage called Broadway, a natural underground “highway” wide enough and high enough to accommodate trucks.
Mammoth Cave was closed during an unusually strong snowstorm and very cold temperatures in January, 1994, when a layer of the Rotunda’s ceiling collapsed. The timing could not have been more fortuitous. Because Mammoth Cave was closed to visitors, no one stood beneath the collapse, which was, in itself, both unusual and not so unusual. “Unusual” because caves are long-lived, relatively stable features. Why “not so unusual”? At times, changes in temperature can facilitate the weathering of caves because rocks, like other solid substances, tend to expand or contract with heating and cooling. The general principle is that caves tend to have a constant temperature that matches the region’s average temperature, but that January storm brought with it both highway-blocking snow and cold temperatures that penetrated the cave and caused the collapse.
Caves might be “relatively stable” environments, but “rather” is a relative term. The stalactites and stalagmites of caverns are slow growers, forming over centuries of stable conditions, often over many millennia. Mammoth Cave began its burrowing through Kentucky’s limestone millions of years ago. As in many caverns, higher sections are usually the driest and the least active, making them “stable,” whereas lower sections are still undergoing development because water migrates downward as it dissolves the limestone. The Rotunda is among the highest sections of the cave, that is, among the sections closest to the surface. It is generally an “inactive” section.
Cave roof collapses are not really uncommon in southern Kentucky: Thus, sinkholes abound in the landscape, and Mammoth Cave underlies a pockmocked landscape of scattered depressions. Those sinkholes indicate that the 1994 collapse of the Rotunda ceiling wasn’t the first such collapse. And apparently, two millennia ago a middle-aged man mining for Epsom salts or mirabilite was crushed beneath a boulder that happened to fall just when he was in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Bad timing. But no park service rangers were around to caution him about the dangers of scraping some emetic beneath a precariously dangling boulder. Like him we all make trips to the drug store or grocery store without much forethought about what might happen.
Timing might not be everything, but it is certainly something worth noting. No doubt the rangers that repeatedly touted the cavern’s safety to tourists were shocked when they returned to the Rotunda the day after the collapse. They were probably also relieved to know they and tourists escaped what could have been a lethal event. The fortuitous timing of the ceiling collapse was, of course, not a simple coincidence. The cold temperatures of the snowstorm caused a rockfall that was inevitable. That humans decided to close the cave for the day was a matter of necessity. Snow-covered highways made traveling to Mammoth Cave difficult even for rangers who lived nearby.
Now think of how timing has played a role in your own life, and ask yourself if it involved free will. One could argue that the park rangers chose to close the cave on the day of the storm, but the closure was precipitated by precipitation over which they had no control. They could have kept the cave open, but to what end? No visitors—at least not in the numbers that would warrant tour guides—could make the trip to the park. The snowstorm determined both the closure and the roof collapse.
And what of that guy who got crushed some 2,000+ years ago? Sure, he decided to go into the cave with a torch made of reeds, and that suggests free will in his fatal timing. But he didn’t have all the information he needed to avoid being crushed. In fact, he couldn’t have that knowledge because the 2,000-ton boulder that crushed him fell under chaotic conditions “set in stone” hundreds of thousands to millions of years earlier. Much of our bad timing isn’t avoidable because we can’t know all the initial and ensuing conditions that lead to an event. We can guess, of course, but that’s all we have. Hmmnnn. Free will? I guess. Certainly, we appear to have the choice to put ourselves in some situations that are more dangerous than others, climbing Half Dome in Yosemite or Mount Everest, for example.
In fact, nothing in or on Earth’s lithosphere is permanent. And the timing of some events, like earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, and volcanic eruptions is a matter of chaos. Seismologists and volcanologists can verify the large range of unpredictability they face. On a risky planet, risks occur, and timing is everything.**
Of course, you want to know you are in control, that you have free will. You could avoid being crushed in a cavern simply by choosing not to go into a cavern. You could choose to drive on I-65 past Mammoth Cave in southern Kentucky only to find a large sinkhole open beneath your section of the highway. Bad timing isn’t completely avoidable. But it isn’t the norm over the entire planet. True, people who live along the San Andreas Fault in California or the Anatolian Fault in Turkey or in other highly active earthquake zones are subject to numerous incidents of bad timing, but, again, some regions are relatively stable. And that makes me wonder whether or not free will is a bit “freer” when no bad timing incident occurs. Given stability, can’t we all make choices that determine our futures?
Prediction. Isn’t that what we want from our science? Isn’t that what science is about, determining a process or feature so that one can make predictions? Sure, the process works in chemistry and materials science. It works in physics. Physically, the future is determined by set processes and materials. But so much is unknown, those volcanic eruptions, for example, and the occasional roof collapse. Prediction. Isn’t that what we crave in our lives, that is, the ability to move from a secure present to a similarly secure future?
You’ll make a number of decisions today. You’ll give little thought to most of them. You might, however, need to make a big decision, one that sends you beneath an analog of the Rotunda Room in Mammoth Cave. You can do your best to account for all contingencies, but you can account for only those that are apparent. As I have often said, what we anticipate is rarely a problem. But we are not often in control of timing in a complex and often chaotic world. And that begs two questions about my statement: Does our inability to anticipate all details associated with our decisions indicate that free will is a fiction—that luck or “good timing” determine the wisdom of a decision? Or, does that inability to know all details, including those associated with conditions of a distant past, mean that free will is simply a matter of freely choosing to ignore our ignorance?
*The calcium nitrate was then processed to make potassium nitrate (KNO3), or true saltpeter, to combine with sulfur and charcoal to make gunpowder.
** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e83ONiIzyK8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0YhlqP1BgE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SOTv6x1lT4
Mammoth Cave was closed during an unusually strong snowstorm and very cold temperatures in January, 1994, when a layer of the Rotunda’s ceiling collapsed. The timing could not have been more fortuitous. Because Mammoth Cave was closed to visitors, no one stood beneath the collapse, which was, in itself, both unusual and not so unusual. “Unusual” because caves are long-lived, relatively stable features. Why “not so unusual”? At times, changes in temperature can facilitate the weathering of caves because rocks, like other solid substances, tend to expand or contract with heating and cooling. The general principle is that caves tend to have a constant temperature that matches the region’s average temperature, but that January storm brought with it both highway-blocking snow and cold temperatures that penetrated the cave and caused the collapse.
Caves might be “relatively stable” environments, but “rather” is a relative term. The stalactites and stalagmites of caverns are slow growers, forming over centuries of stable conditions, often over many millennia. Mammoth Cave began its burrowing through Kentucky’s limestone millions of years ago. As in many caverns, higher sections are usually the driest and the least active, making them “stable,” whereas lower sections are still undergoing development because water migrates downward as it dissolves the limestone. The Rotunda is among the highest sections of the cave, that is, among the sections closest to the surface. It is generally an “inactive” section.
Cave roof collapses are not really uncommon in southern Kentucky: Thus, sinkholes abound in the landscape, and Mammoth Cave underlies a pockmocked landscape of scattered depressions. Those sinkholes indicate that the 1994 collapse of the Rotunda ceiling wasn’t the first such collapse. And apparently, two millennia ago a middle-aged man mining for Epsom salts or mirabilite was crushed beneath a boulder that happened to fall just when he was in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Bad timing. But no park service rangers were around to caution him about the dangers of scraping some emetic beneath a precariously dangling boulder. Like him we all make trips to the drug store or grocery store without much forethought about what might happen.
Timing might not be everything, but it is certainly something worth noting. No doubt the rangers that repeatedly touted the cavern’s safety to tourists were shocked when they returned to the Rotunda the day after the collapse. They were probably also relieved to know they and tourists escaped what could have been a lethal event. The fortuitous timing of the ceiling collapse was, of course, not a simple coincidence. The cold temperatures of the snowstorm caused a rockfall that was inevitable. That humans decided to close the cave for the day was a matter of necessity. Snow-covered highways made traveling to Mammoth Cave difficult even for rangers who lived nearby.
Now think of how timing has played a role in your own life, and ask yourself if it involved free will. One could argue that the park rangers chose to close the cave on the day of the storm, but the closure was precipitated by precipitation over which they had no control. They could have kept the cave open, but to what end? No visitors—at least not in the numbers that would warrant tour guides—could make the trip to the park. The snowstorm determined both the closure and the roof collapse.
And what of that guy who got crushed some 2,000+ years ago? Sure, he decided to go into the cave with a torch made of reeds, and that suggests free will in his fatal timing. But he didn’t have all the information he needed to avoid being crushed. In fact, he couldn’t have that knowledge because the 2,000-ton boulder that crushed him fell under chaotic conditions “set in stone” hundreds of thousands to millions of years earlier. Much of our bad timing isn’t avoidable because we can’t know all the initial and ensuing conditions that lead to an event. We can guess, of course, but that’s all we have. Hmmnnn. Free will? I guess. Certainly, we appear to have the choice to put ourselves in some situations that are more dangerous than others, climbing Half Dome in Yosemite or Mount Everest, for example.
In fact, nothing in or on Earth’s lithosphere is permanent. And the timing of some events, like earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, and volcanic eruptions is a matter of chaos. Seismologists and volcanologists can verify the large range of unpredictability they face. On a risky planet, risks occur, and timing is everything.**
Of course, you want to know you are in control, that you have free will. You could avoid being crushed in a cavern simply by choosing not to go into a cavern. You could choose to drive on I-65 past Mammoth Cave in southern Kentucky only to find a large sinkhole open beneath your section of the highway. Bad timing isn’t completely avoidable. But it isn’t the norm over the entire planet. True, people who live along the San Andreas Fault in California or the Anatolian Fault in Turkey or in other highly active earthquake zones are subject to numerous incidents of bad timing, but, again, some regions are relatively stable. And that makes me wonder whether or not free will is a bit “freer” when no bad timing incident occurs. Given stability, can’t we all make choices that determine our futures?
Prediction. Isn’t that what we want from our science? Isn’t that what science is about, determining a process or feature so that one can make predictions? Sure, the process works in chemistry and materials science. It works in physics. Physically, the future is determined by set processes and materials. But so much is unknown, those volcanic eruptions, for example, and the occasional roof collapse. Prediction. Isn’t that what we crave in our lives, that is, the ability to move from a secure present to a similarly secure future?
You’ll make a number of decisions today. You’ll give little thought to most of them. You might, however, need to make a big decision, one that sends you beneath an analog of the Rotunda Room in Mammoth Cave. You can do your best to account for all contingencies, but you can account for only those that are apparent. As I have often said, what we anticipate is rarely a problem. But we are not often in control of timing in a complex and often chaotic world. And that begs two questions about my statement: Does our inability to anticipate all details associated with our decisions indicate that free will is a fiction—that luck or “good timing” determine the wisdom of a decision? Or, does that inability to know all details, including those associated with conditions of a distant past, mean that free will is simply a matter of freely choosing to ignore our ignorance?
*The calcium nitrate was then processed to make potassium nitrate (KNO3), or true saltpeter, to combine with sulfur and charcoal to make gunpowder.
** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e83ONiIzyK8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0YhlqP1BgE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SOTv6x1lT4
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