As the sky gradually darkened, Larry continued to study Lucian's paper with rapt attention. Once the resistance in his heart had faded, he found that this paper had brought him tremendous inspiration.
"...and what I wish to explain now is that perhaps the problem lies with determinism itself. Some processes are probabilistic, irreversible..." Larry murmured this passage over and over, rubbing his brow. "If there were no strict laws governing the world, how chaotic and disordered reality would be—but in fact, it isn't. No, that's not quite right either. Sometimes, many things are truly in a state of chaos, impossible to predict."
"Damn it—I'll stop mulling over that problem for now. I won't extend this fantastical microscopic-domain theory to the macroscopic world just yet. Even if it holds in the microscopic domain, I believe there are other factors in the transition that cause the wave function to collapse and fix the outcome." Larry cursed under his breath and decided to evaluate the paper solely within the microscopic domain; otherwise, he felt his head would explode and his entire worldview would shatter.
Because this seemed to contradict reality—he couldn't possibly be a probability wave existing everywhere at once, could he? Present simultaneously in the laboratory, at the Elemental Will headquarters, and in the Alinsa Magic Tower?
An unknown amount of time passed before Larry pulled out all of his experimental records and research papers on the microscopic domain. He carefully analyzed them from the perspectives of the probability interpretation, the uncertainty principle, and the complementarity principle, reconstructing the framework of New Alchemy and quantum mechanics. The result was exactly as he had expected, yet somewhat difficult to accept—it was the most logically self-consistent theoretical explanation that best fit the experimental data, capable of resolving several previously unsolved problems!
Without realizing it, the sky had grown faintly bright. Larry picked up his Feather Pen, deliberated for a moment, and then wrote: "...at least in the microscopic domain, none of the current arcane experiments can prove that Lord Evans' probability interpretation is wrong. Moreover, it resolves the problems that arose from Lord Oliver's wave function interpretation..."
"...The complementarity principle also unifies the particle nature and wave nature of electrons from a philosophical height, allowing us to more truly 'see' the wonders of the microscopic domain. Whether the uncertainty principle is an intrinsic property of particles or a phenomenon caused by observation remains to be proven through the design of arcane experiments."
For the time being, he did not think too deeply about what factors prevented the probabilistic and uncertain nature of the microscopic domain from affecting the macroscopic world, because that might introduce conditions never before considered, conditions never before discovered!
"Perhaps these factors or conditions are the essence of the soul? The essence of arcane magic? The fundamental reason why magic patterns produce arcane effects..." After finishing his review, Larry sank into boundless, wandering thoughts.
Without anyone quite noticing it, a new generation of high-level Archanists who had grown up in the wave of New Alchemy began to stand on the opposite side from the old-era mages—including numerous Grand Archanists. The torrent of change left them no time to deliberate further; they could only press forward on Archanist instinct alone.
Similarly, Dieppe—who had used the first Evans Archanist Award to gain entry to the Review Committee—experienced a comparable reaction upon reading Lucian's tripartite "Fundamentals of Quantum Mechanics and New Alchemy."
He had once believed that he, capable of conceiving the "wave-particle duality" of microscopic particles, was a truly imaginative Archanist—a representative of open-minded thinking. But after reading this paper, he realized that his imagination could no longer keep pace. Whether it was the probability interpretation of the wave function, the unsettling concept of an omnipresent probability cloud, or the two Archanist quantities that could never be determined simultaneously—all of it far exceeded his imagination, far beyond the boundaries of his understanding!
"This is a subversive challenge to determinism—at least in the microscopic domain!" Amid his shock and instinctive rejection, Dieppe also felt an inexplicable surge of excitement, as though he were a warrior charging against the old order, just like the countless epic heroes who had once buried the Mage Empire.
Beneath the cry of that charge echoed the tragic thunder of an old era crumbling and the hopeful voices of a new one rising.
This vision made his blood boil with a mixture of fear and longing—the same as when he had first proposed the "wave-particle duality" of microscopic particles.
"Will this lead to a complete restructuring of the entire Archanist system? Will this turn the Council to a new chapter?" he muttered to himself, reading on with a touch of manic intensity, trying to understand every facet of Lucian's paper from every possible angle.
With his resistance and rejection stripped away, he found that Lord Evans' paper explained the vast number of current experimental phenomena perfectly, laying a genuine theoretical foundation for the two New Alchemy frameworks of matrix mechanics and wave mechanics—even though, from a macroscopic perspective, it appeared absurd and self-contradictory!
"If we set aside the question of how the microscopic world transitions to the macroscopic world, then Lord Evans' paper—containing all three theories—is absolutely the best and most fitting 'relative truth' for the microscopic domain. No matter how absurd I find it, I must admit that the sheer volume of experimental data points to this conclusion. I suggest that all Archanists, while unable to falsify it, proceed with research on New Alchemy according to its interpretation—but refrain from using it to construct their understanding of the world just yet..."
"I believe that the process of falsifying this foundational theory will bring about a flourishing in the microscopic domain. Regardless of what the final result proves to be—whether true or false—the process itself is a harvest, a process of development..."
As he wrote his evaluation, Dieppe felt for the first time the pull of the era's great current. It made him want to plunge headlong into it, to leave his own mark upon the age—so that his choice of the Archanist's path would not have been in vain!
Inside the tower, Nesisca and Samantha—who had spent the past several days consulting "the Seer"—stared blankly at the paper in their hands. "The Seer" Bagnor walked to the edge of the tower, gazed down at the buildings small as ants, then looked up at the brilliant stars in the sky, and sighed: "It's finally come..."
Just as his premonition had foretold, the subversive blow to the theoretical foundation of the entire stellar astronomy system had arrived. Lucian Evans, after destroying one old theory after another, had finally set his sights on one of the most fundamental pillars of the current Archanist and arcane system—determinism!
Moreover, he had indirectly negated the value and meaning of exploration itself—for no matter how hard one tried, it was impossible to determine both the position and momentum of an electron at the same time!