The Return of Minnesota Fats

I am standing in my neighborhood pool hall, cue in hand, staring into the eyes of the local billiards champion. I am one ball in one pocket away from beating this guy for the first time in my not so illustrious billiards career. 

I approach the table with an almost cocky self-confidence. I’ve made this shot a million times before; there’s absolutely no reason I shouldn’t be able to do so again. Then suddenly, for no apparent reason, I start thinking about David Hume (and the problem of causality). What else would I think about at a time like this?

My plan had been simple enough: Address the ball, “Hello ball,” take aim, slide the cue through my sweaty fingers, strike at the appropriate angle with the appropriate force and bingo, a new South Side Pool Hall champion is crowned. My lifelong dream…accomplished! And I’m only 45. 

Why so confident? Well, I’m confident that I can judge the angles and that I can impart the proper speed and direction to the ball. After all, I’ve been playing pool since I was 9. What could possibly go wrong?

Only everything! Experienced as I am, I could misjudge the angle. Playing pool is like cooking pork: the margin for error is miniscule. Or the cue could slip in my trembling hand, or I could have a mid-stroke stroke, or the ceiling tiles could suddenly fall, littering the felt and deflecting my ball’s trajectory. 

Or I might “feel the earth move under my feet” (Carole King): tectonic plates have shifted before and they will again. Now my table tilts! Or our beloved pool hall might be ground zero for a thermonuclear missile strike. Or God could work a miracle to save his chosen champion (not me, apparently). Or the laws of physics, the sine qua non of my strategy, could change without warning. Or a butterfly could flap its wings. 

Come to think of it, there’s almost no chance I’ll make this shot. Granted, each of these catastrophes, by itself, is improbable. But add them together? The everchanging universe would have to hold its breath (lie quiet, Heraclitus) and how often have you known that to happen? 

I imagined that I lived in a universe where quantitative values are conserved and where friction and other ‘noise’ is minimal…and for the most part I do. For the most part. My expectations going into a game of pool are abstracted from the welter of information that is Universe. Mentally, I place myself and my immediate environs in a virtual Faraday Cage. Right here, right now, this is the only universe I need to consider…until it isn’t.

I have a 9 year old of my own, and she’s recently started to show an interest in pool. I explain to her, standing next to me and beaming with dad-pride, that the momentum I impart to the cue-ball will transfer to the 8 ball, driving it into the designated pocket. 

I don’t mention that this is dependent on my health, on ceiling tiles and tectonic plates, on super power foreign policy and on the flapping of insect wings. I certainly don’t let her know that it is dependent on the laws of physics remaining unchanged and on God forbearing any miracles on behalf of my opponent.  

I take the shot…and marvel of marvels, the 8 ball drops just as I planned, David Hume notwithstanding, I have my historic victory. My daughter can be proud. I did it! Well, not just I. Thank you God, thank you universe! Thank you tiles and thank you plates! Thank you hostile foreign powers…and thanks to butterflies everywhere…and Good Night Moon.

A self-styled ‘reporter’ from local cable TV innocently asked, “So what do you think caused you to triumph this time after so many failed attempts?” (Gee, thanks for that.)

I didn’t answer her. How could I? I’d seem like a nut if explained that the ‘drop of the 8 ball’ was caused by everything in the Universe - everything that has ever happened since the dawn of time (Big Bang) and everything will happen until ‘the world ends…with a bang or a whimper’ (Big Crunch or Big Freeze). (Eliot) 

Not to mention everything that is happening right now; no I mean right now; I mean now; ok, now. Out of breath yet? I know I am. Chasing the ‘now’ is exhausting…and like Zeno’s tortoise, it can never be caught.

For the most part events do not happen randomly in our universe. We’re told that every thing has a cause. Trouble is, the cause of every thing is everything!

How sharp you are! You were way ahead of me, as usual; you anticipated that I would say, “The cause of every thing is everything else?” But I didn’t, did I? So what happened to else? Truth to tell, there is no ‘else’! Every thing is caused by everything, including itself. 

So big deal! What’s one more causal element in a universe made up of googles of causal elements? Well, it’s literally everything, because in our world any thing can play a critical role in the determination of anything else. While some causal elements play an obvious role, most are imperceptible, but all of them are operative everywhere all the time. 

Our world is fundamentally recursive. Every event involves an element of self-reflection and self-determination. To the extent that an event determines itself, we say that the event is causa sui. To Aquinas and the Scholastics, that 13th century grunge band, only God was causa sui. But we know better. We know that ultimately every event is sui generis.

Every event determines that it is and what it is in the context of its inherited Actual World. As it turns out, events typically conserve as much of their Actual Worlds as possible, consistent with self-determination. Stability and continuity are themselves values since they often serve the Eternal Values (Beauty, Truth, Justice) that motivate events in the first place.

So, the world is totally, but minimally, novel! That is what gives our chaotic universe its mind-boggling diversity and its mind-numbing uniformity. It is what allowed me to become the new South Side Pool Hall champion…and it is what may someday let my daughter do the same.   

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Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2), painted in 1912, is an oil on canvas that blends elements of Cubism and Futurism to depict a fragmented figure in motion; it is housed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art as part of the Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection (accession number 1950-134-59).

Like the narrator’s pool shot shaped by countless visible and invisible forces, Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) captures motion as a cascade of interconnected moments, suggesting that no single action exists in isolation.