Lured into the study of consciousness by the Trojan horse of physics—quantum mechanics—science has entered no-man’s land. At the quantum level, the world turns topsy-turvy. Matter looks like Swiss cheese, mostly holes. Worse, matter has an alter ego: energy. Matter, it seems, is congealed energy; energy is liberated matter. Moreover, there is the immensely troubling duality of matter/energy, revealed by “double-slit” experiments with light or electrons. Electrons, for example, manifest sometimes as particles—which are localized in space—and sometimes as waves—which are distributed, but never as both simultaneously. What then is an electron when it behaves as a wave? Physicists concede that an electron’s wavelike nature expresses its tendency to exist when observed. Dominating the landscape of quantum mechanics is Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which states that one can never know simultaneously the velocity and position of a quantum object. You can know where it is, but not where it’s going. Or where it’s going, but not where it is. Whatever the experimentalist does to determine the one destroys the determination of the other. On this virtually all physicists agree: the uncertainty principle collapses the Cartesian partition. “The very act of observing,” articulated Heisenberg, “alters the object being observed.” Subject and object interact. Mind and matter are not disjoint as Descartes presumed. “It would be most satisfactory of all,” envisioned Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli, “if physics and psyche could be seen as complementary aspects of the same reality.” By forcing a schism between scientific and religious worldviews, Copernicus and Darwin upset our perceptual cosmos. In the new physics, however, the veil between science and mysticism seems precariously thin, and the universe begins to once again take on a numinous glow. To hard-boiled positivists, this signals a disastrous turn of events. But for many, weary of denying either head or heart, it’s a breath of fresh air. Philosophy—the love of wisdom—may once again become whole. -Dave Pruett
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 18:21:07 +0000
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