| Quantum Physics and Elections | 2004-12-08 16:59 10 comments |
 by Flemming FunchThis article by Paul Levy is supposedly about Quantum Physics and the 2004 U.S. Election. Well, it doesn't actually say much about elections other than at the end, essentially that what actually happened depends on how you look at it. You know, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Theorem. And that the past really is created from the present by how we look at it, so it is somewhat meaningless to talk about what exactly it was. Actually I mostly agree. That is, I agree largely with the cosmology that he presents. He invokes various luminary quantum physicists like John Wheeler, the guy who came up with the idea of the black hole. The quantum universe is one which pulsates in and out of the void multiple times every nano-second, endlessly recreating itself anew. Each moment brings with it a potentially new past, which we are the ‘builders’ of in the present moment. In this present moment right now there are endless possibilities, it is an infinitely textured moment in time seething with unmanifested potential. In the future, when we consider this multi-dimensional moment we are in now, we will probably focus our attention and only remember a certain slice or aspect of this very moment, solidifying it in time, and this will be our ‘memory’ of that seemingly past event. And yet, by the way we remember this present moment in the future will have an actual effect on the way that moment in the future manifests. So on the one hand, the way we contemplate the past has a creative effect on how the present moment manifests. And I think he's right. But the trouble is that so many people, myself included, find the metaphors of quantum physics so inspiring and illuminating, without really having studied quantum physics. It seems to provide such a fabulous cosmology that backs up a new agey "we're creating the universe" view. And I guess it probably does. But it is mainly its metaphors that are inspiring, and it gets a little dangerous to actually invoke quantum physics for their support, when one doesn't really understand them. The trouble is that even though there are greatly respected theoretical physicists who advocate such a radical view of the universe, there are just as many, or more, scientists who consider it complete hogwash. Using quantum physics as a reference for these kinds of cosmologies, as applied to various aspects of every day life, just tends to make those guys really furious. Well, I think it is probably because they're wrong, and they're stuck in a fundamentalist materialist belief system that isn't going anywhere, and eventually our shared ideas about the world actually will catch up with quantum physics, as some of those guys die off, but it will take a while. While looking around for references, I ran into the story about Alan Sokal, a physics professor who in 1996 carried out what he considered a hoax by getting an article submitted to a serious scientific journal, which he filled with what he considered unfounded nonsense like references to morphogenic fields a la Rupert Sheldrake, and applications of quantum physics to politics. And it created quite a scandal when he later revealed that he did it to see how easily one could fool people by referring to a lot of authorities and by saying post-modern stuff that people would like to hear, without any kind of scientific rigor. So he complained that he was able to get away with publishing an article that wasn't properly peer reviewed and that didn't argue properly for its points. Actually, the crux of the matter seems to be that Sokal believes in one finite objective reality, so therefore he consideres all other views unscientific, and he tried to prove that point by satirizing them. Much of what he was saying, and which he himself considered utterly ridiculous, had been said before by much more respected scientists than himself, like Bohr and Einstein and Wheeler. See here. Some of whom went a good deal further in relating theoretical physics concepts to sociology, psychology and politics. Maybe the joke is that mutually exclusive views on the world can all be right, because you do essentially get back what you start off trying to prove. So fundamentalist materialist scientists can proceed to stack up more proof for the world being essentially newtonian and objective, and that all the weird stuff like relativity and quantum uncertainty and 12 dimensional space just applies to some remote circumstances and have nothing whatsoever to do with us, and it is all just a theory anyway. And, well, more free-thinking scientists might arrive at a very different world view where reality is fluid and greatly influenced by how we perceive it and think about it, and where wonderous things are possible. For the first group to consider themselves right, they have to consider the second group wrong, as there can only be one objective reality. Whereas the opposite isn't particularly the case. Anyway, I choose to bet on the models that explain the most possible phenomena in the world, rather than the models that have to suppress and ridicule all the stuff that just doesn't fit into them. Anyway, back to Paul Levy's article. In a circular, non-linear and acausal feedback loop, the past effects us in this present moment, while at the same time, in this present moment we effect the past. The way we observe the past in this present moment actually effects the past which simultaneously effects us in this present moment in what I call a ‘synchronistic, cybernetic feedback loop.’ The doorway is the present moment, which is the point where our power to shape reality is to be found. In quantum physics the universe wasn’t created billions of years ago in the big bang but rather is being created right now by what Wheeler refers to as "genesis by observership." The mystery of this universe doesn’t lie at some point way back in the past, but rather, right now, in this very living present moment. Might or might not be science mumbo-jumbo, according to hardcore skeptics, but who cares. I like it, and I'd say it pretty much works like that. Doesn't mean we can't discover who won the U.S. election, though. Or maybe it is just that I prefer that we discover one alternate past, rather than the other. |