“…received an innumerable quantity of exact replies concerning matters about which I had not asked.”
— Leo Tolstoy (on what invariably happens when asking scientists about the meaning of life)
“It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.”
— Carl Sagan
The pursuit of happiness is of such paramount importance to us that the founding fathers of the United States mentioned it in the Declaration of Independence as one of the self-evident truths. We might follow different paths on this road to happiness, yet most of the ingredients are common to us all. Some of the ingredients are obviously of a great evolutionary value, such as having children and finding a suitable environment in which to raise them.
Other ingredients are of a less tangible nature. We yearn to understand our origins, and this includes the origin of life, the origin of the universe and the meaning of it all. None of these are of any immediate biological value, per se (as the existence of other living creatures illustrates) and yet we all feel that they are sometimes as important as our biological needs and on occasion even more so.
Trying to understand who we really are seems to make us happy. This thirst for understanding is undoubtedly common to all humanity. I am an atheist, but what follows is not a piece on “science versus religion or philosophy”. Rather, it is about viewing science, and quantum physics in particular (I’ll come to this shortly), as an integral part of our endeavor to understand what this is all about. And I do believe that science has produced a power which is able to claim: “Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst again.”
Two features seem to me common to all human activity aimed at understanding the world, be it through science, philosophy, religion or art.
One is the feeling of transcendence. Put very simply, we all feel – at one point in life or other – that there is more to the universe than meets the eye. It can’t just all be about what we can see or hear or touch or feel.
The notion of transcendence was probably most forcefully and poetically expressed by the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato, who in his classic book The Republic, has the main protagonist Socrates explain the allegory of the cave. In probably one of the most beautiful paragraphs every written in Western philosophy Socrates says:
And now, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: –Behold! human beings living in a underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the cave; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets…And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent. Like ourselves, they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave.
Plato, speaking through Socrates, is implying that we, like his prisoners, only see shadows of appearances of real objects and hardly the actual fundamental nature of what is causing them. To grasp the real nature we need to free ourselves from the chains and leave the cave.
Physics, more than any other human activity, seems to me to be able to reveal the non-obvious aspect of the universe. And quantum physics in particular, is not just the most accurate description of natural phenomena, but at the same time is the most counterintuitive. It shows us more than any other pursuit that we are very akin to Plato’s prisoners in the cave and require a deep insight, arrived at after a long and laborious search, regarding what the ultimate underlying reality really is.
Basing our world view on just what our sense are telling us, we are naturally inclined to be materialistic. What you see is what you get. We perceive that the world is populated by stuff, such as tables, chairs, trees, rocks, animals and so on. All this stuff can be seen, touched, heard and felt. However, quantum physics teaches us that matter is mainly void and that its properties are best described by a mysterious function – the Psi function, of which we certainly have no direct experience.
In the quantum world, objects exist in many different places at the same time and their physical states can be more correlated than is classically allowed. These correlations are known as entanglement and allow us to achieve technological feats, such as teleportation, that are impossible classically. But to see these intrinsically quantum phenomena requires us to leave the imprisonment made by the cave of classical physics and use refined technology that allows us to interact with the quantum world. Transcending the world of classical physics has probably been the greatest triumph of the scientific method to date. The bonus of our impulse to leave the cave, of course, is the astounding development of our technology, which also contributes to our increased wellbeing.
The other aspect of nature that all humans are surprised and impressed by is its order and simplicity. It is actually remarkable how far Occam’s razor, “assumptions should not be multiplied beyond necessity”, can be taken when trying to understand natural phenomena. It is simply mind-blowing how much actually follows from a handful of physical principles. The principles are currently those of quantum physics and general relativity, though I strongly believe that the latter will be reduced to the former. I will not expand on this issue here as I have written more extensively about it elsewhere.
On small scales, quantum physics explains the structure of matter (and how the void that is dominant can still give rise to the solidity we feel), the laws of chemistry and through it hopefully one day it will also explain the laws of biology. How far this can go is by no means clear, but it has already gone quite the distance. There are even some claims that life is a necessity given the laws of physics.
On the other hand, we have large structures such as galaxies, their clusters and so on. It is plausible that the biggest scale structure too can be explained through the laws of quantum physics. Some accounts of the universe are based on the quantum tunneling of the universe into its own existence. These accounts are currently fully compliant with the existing astronomical observations. The small quantum jitters at this early stage of the universe are then amplified by a rapid expansion and are believed to lead to all the structure we see around us.
In fact, there is a formal way according to which quantum physics is a better compressor of data than classical physics. Namely, if we try to observe a certain process (say we detect photons and register the sequence of clicks in the detector), then the sequences of outcomes are in general more efficiently mimicked quantumly than classically. Quantum physics can reproduce our observations with less information than classical physics!
Interestingly enough, and as my recent work with my colleagues from China and Australia suggests, the quantum compression might also be able to explain the difference in the dynamics of entropy (which quantifies disorder in the universe) and complexity (which tells us how compressible the universe is). Namely, the universe is meant to start in a very ordered (low entropy state) and continue towards maximum entropy just as the second law of thermodynamics stipulates. For complexity, however, the universe starts in a simple state, and ends in a simple state. Sometime within these two extremes (now?) it is meant to be reach a maximum complexity. It might not be surprising that creatures like us, capable of understanding the universe, arise during this most complex epoch. And understanding where we come from and why would of course bring a great deal of satisfaction.
Though we all feel awe at the existence of order in the universe, this fact can also lead to the uncomfortable fear of determinism. If physical facts fix all the facts in the world, does that not mean that all our actions are predetermined?
This, of course, is a deep question to which science has no answer at present. Suffice it to say that quantum physics certainly destroys Leibniz’s “principle of sufficient reason” according to which everything that happens must have an underlying cause. The most elementary events in quantum physics are, as far as we know, intrinsically random and happen without any prior reason. However, whilst this might help us alleviate our fear of determinism, it is certainly not enough to guarantee any free will. I am personally happy to live with that state of affairs, but I am also confident that we will discover more on this very issue in the years to come. And, to paraphrase Sagan, any new understanding can only add to the beauty of the world.
It is said that at the entrance to Plato’s academy, the world’s first university in the modern sense of the word, it was inscribed: “Do not enter if you do not understand geometry.” After two and a half millennia I feel we can afford to be a bit presumptuous to suggest a small correction to the great Plato: “Do not enter if you do not understand quantum physics (and, possibly optionally, geometry).” This might not satisfy Tolstoy, but, as far as I am concerned, it is the road to all emotional and intellectual fulfilment.
Discussion Questions:
1) Should quantum physics be taught much earlier in school and as part of general education?
2) Even if it were not for the purpose of intellectual fulfillment, quantum physics is still the basis of current technology and will almost certainly dominate the future technology. Should the public be better informed about it?
3) Does quantum physics indicate that the ultimate nature of reality might be transcendental, in the sense of beyond the human rational power of understanding?
Discussion Summary
Two interesting questions have emerged from the discussion following my essay, “What Does Quantum Physics Have to Do With You?” The first one, broadly speaking, is the question of how much our psychology colors the way we understand the world and, in particular, – and this is where I think things get interesting – the way we do science. We scientists would, of course, like to think that all human imperfections, though clearly present in the scientific practice, cancel out in the long run through experimental verification and falsification and that all that remains is truth (or closer and closer approximations to it). However, in the same way that it is clear that other apes have a more limited grasp and understanding of reality than we do, it might well happen that evolution will produce a species whose command and understanding of reality will far outstrip our own. Whatever they discover might be transcendental to us in the same way that apes will never “get” quantum physics. But is there a way of testing this? All sorts of psychological experiments confirm our human bias and the field of behavioral economics – with its many Nobel Prizes – is based on our misjudgments due to various psychological biases. However, can it be that the laws of physics suffer from the same biases? That would be truly astonishing (I doubt that any physicist would ever really bet on this), but what I would like to ask if there is a scientific way of revealing that bias in the same way that the economists such as Daniel Kahneman reveal our bias to making wrong inferences due to our human evolutionary idiosyncrasies. Might the differences between the observer and the observed – the subject that is very topical in quantum physics and has been for a long time- also belong to this category? This is I think a very difficult question and I for one do not even know how to begin to tackle this issue.
The second big question that has emerged from the discussion is, in fact, just within the confines of quantum physics itself. I am a big fan of the idea that quantum physics implies that locally things are random but globally they are not (this view is sometimes called “the Church of Higher Hilbert Space”, because quantum states live in the so called Hilbert Space and the word Church indicates that the Higher Hilbert Space is our belief and not an experimentally established fact). In fact, we can understand the entropy of an object (which quantifies its randomness) through the amount of entanglement it shares with the rest of the universe. So, fascinatingly, while the entropy of the whole universe might well be zero (meaning there is no randomness at the highest level), we all see finite entropy locally (i.e. randomness arises precisely because we ignore all the entanglements with the rest!). My question here is to do with the tension between the order we observe all around us (the existence of well-defined laws that cannot be circumvented even by us humans) and the disorder we believe exists at the most fundamental level of experimentation and as predicted by quantum physics. Is the universe fundamentally completely random or is it in fact incredibly ordered and structured? The two – ordered and random – are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as was already speculated on by the Ancient Greeks. Some of them argued that order can arise out of chaos. Darwin also presented a powerful case that biological order can arise out of no (or very little) order. So it is an old question, perhaps stated in a more modern language here. Again, is there a scientific way of experimenting and determining which is the case? More specifically, is there a way we can bridge the gap between the macroscopic and the microscopic (the microscopic randomness frequently gets amplified to become a macroscopic determinism)? I believe this is one of the biggest outstanding problems in science at present. I have been promoting the idea that the concept of information might help here and is a deeper concept than many others we have in science today. It somehow feels that it ought to be prior to other concepts such as matter and energy and space and time. Furthermore quantum information is capable of being created out of nowhere as it were. We can start with no information (or with maximum information) and make a measurement that creates (new) information. Having said that, it is certainly not possible to formally derive the rest of physics from information alone. In many ways this is work in progress and very important at that.
New Big Questions:
1. Does our psychological makeup affect the truth value of our physical theories?
2. Is there a way in which we can test if certain features of our universe (such as its temperature and time) are consequences of entanglement at a higher level?
As an educator, I think it is a big mistake to keep pushing higher level concepts down into the earlier grades.
Plato though geometry was requisite for a higher education because of the way its study formed the mind. You need the ability to think abstractly to study Euclidian geometry and I suspect the same is true for quantum physics. The best preparation to understand both quantum physics and how it relates to the meaning of life would be a classical liberal arts education which includes a solid undersanding of mathematics and natural science, but is not limited to those.
Actual experience educating youth would show that students are incapable of appreciating Shakespeare’s writing until at least junior high. People are not really able to engage with a Shakespeare play until they have gained a great verbal fluency, abstract reasoning, and considerable life experience.
I suspect no more can be done in regard to quantum physics at the elementary level except to learn there are these words and they are important.
“[Quantum physics] shows us more than any other pursuit that we are very akin to Plato’s prisoners in the cave and require a deep insight, arrived at after a long and laborious search, regarding what the ultimate underlying reality really is. Basing our world view on just what our sense are telling us, we are naturally inclined to be materialistic.”
Max Planck, Nobel Prize winner in physics and the founder of quantum theory, “after a long and laborious search,” or as he put it, after having “devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter,” concluded that a “mind is the matrix of all matter.” If he was originally inclined to be materialistic, his laborious study eventually revealed to him the silliness of the a priori assumptions of materialism.
“There are even some claims that life is a necessity given the laws of physics.”
If life is a necessity given the laws of physics, then those laws were finely tuned and orchestrated for just that purpose. There are a virtually infinite number of configurations of matter, energy and the laws of physics the Big Bang could have produced that would have made life an impossibility. Yet the magnificent symphony of life was orchestrated. The sound of a mindless accident is noise if it makes a sound at all. A symphony requires a composer.
The “ultimate underlying reality” is a Mind.
I was struck by the subtle way this article takes the deep concepts of meaning, purpose and transcendence and hollows them out. Transcendence is described as a “feeling,” or in the quote from Sagan, “romance”. “Order and simplicity” is the beginning for, and the end to complexity. Quantum mechanics becomes an altar to which we bow down for truth. Here is the danger of reductionism – that as our gaze focuses down the presumed causal chain we forget to look up and by doing so we ignore the grander half of human experience and the connection to what really makes us human.
Quantum mechanics has probed more deeply into the mysteries of the physical and has torn apart the false dogma of determinism. It does not, however, provide any more meaning to human life than the classical physics that came before. It does not tell us how to live, or why we are here, and it does not and cannot answer ultimate ontological questions. Pretending that it does, or leaving the field of inquiry by “being happy with the state of affairs” is an excuse for those who have blinded themselves to the hardest and most profound questions that humans have struggled with for millennia. Meaning and purpose in human life are questions that transcend the finite and the physical – the answers are not to be found in Quantum Mechanics or any other empirical enterprise.
The author writes, “Basing our world view on just what our sense are telling us, we are naturally inclined to be materialistic. . . . However, quantum physics teaches us [about things] of which we certainly have no direct experience.” Philosohers in the realist school do say that everything we know gets into our intellects through our senses, but this does not make us materialists, because we perceive the forms of things–we abstract from the particular to the universal. It seems to me that normal human beings can’t but live in both the material and rational worlds (the latter of which is immaterial).
1) Should quantum physics be taught much earlier in school and as part of general education?No. Cosmos fans might have liked the parts where the scientist explained advanced perspectives in physics to their children. People who grasp quantum physics aren’t likely to show up for cameo appearances at low-level courses. They should spend some time with their children, even if all they are thinking about is paired particles.
2) Even if it were not for the purpose of intellectual fulfillment, quantum physics is still the basis of current technology and will almost certainly dominate the future technology. Should the public be better informed about it?
The big decisions about quantum physics is are made at a high level in government and corporations. These decisions are independent of popular opinion. Whether or not the public can be better informed is determined by how successful the media presentations are. We can always hope that a new Einstein would achieve the optimal quantum state after being energized by a presentation.
3) Does quantum physics indicate that the ultimate nature of reality might be transcendental, in the sense of beyond the human rational power of understanding?
Yes. So are ordinary decisions. Psychologists are making a strong case for how mere humans will block out important criteria, have a limited ability to assess costs and benefits, and don’t have a proper Psi function for the outcomes.
My questions:
1. Why do quantum theorists say that light appears to shift to lower energy, when the source is moving away from the observer? Is not the light that the observer sees real?
2. Why do quantum theorists say that Newton’s law of gravity is good enough to launch earth-orbiting satellites, when NASA uses experimental values and an iterative calculation?
3. Does entropy increase as a star ages and produces heavier molecules? Should we assume that the more visible entropy increases are greater than those that we have more difficulty measuring?4. Is all entropy the same?
To answer your questions:
1) I remember fealing slightly cheated that I had not been taught quantum physics earlier when it seemed to open my eyes of understanding in my first year chemistry courses. Before that, although I was always deeply interested in chemistry, the teaching of it seemed to be mostly about the accumulation of facts. But that is just my personal take on my own experience – I am certainly not qualified to comment on whether introducing quantum physics earlier would be generally beneficial from an educational point of view.
2) Yes – but the problem seems, as far as I can see so far – how to achieve that without either trivializing the science or pandering to the more mystical and fringy interpretations.
3) Perhaps, but I must say I was a little distrubed, to be honest, by your remarks about the “intrinsic” randomness of quantum events destroying, as it were, causality and “sufficient reason”. I thought the point was that although individual quantum events may be “intrinsically random”, in reality they all fit within the broader statistical distribution of events that comprise the system of which they are each part. It may be true that an individual quantum event in isolation is intrinsically (not just practically) impossible to predict, but that is not the same as saying it happens for no reason because all the other quantum events to which it is related (and which are equally unpredictable) all play their part too. Entanglement and “spooky action” stretch the boundaries of that influence and interconnectedness to extraordinary limits. I think the principles are probably within the grasp of our classical minds, but knowledge of the exact quantum nature of the universe (at any given time) can only be held by the entire universe (at any given time). If there is a transcendant “mind” that contains all that (quantumly compressed?) data (at any given time) it is the quantum mind of the universe. I don’t mind calling that “God”, but I suspect you would prefer to call it simply “the universe”.
Very well written intellectual article by V.Vedral. Since it covers areas which I understand quite well I could sum up this nice article as a reflection of all that we know and all that we do not yet know about our realities of existence. On the possible integration of TQM and TGR in which it is argued that the latter will be most probably absorbed by the former, I do not think so for most likely they will be treated to a significant extent as separate fundamental issues and equally important in describing our ultimate realities. Therefore I do not think that QM alone will be the final explanations of our deepest reality of existence and that of the universe. I would replace the writing on the entrance of Plato’s academy with “Do not discuss our realities of existence if you do not understand Einstein’s relativity and quantum physics “.
“Trying to understand who we really are seems to make us happy. This thirst for understanding is undoubtedly common to all humanity. I am an atheist, but what follows is not a piece on ‘science versus religion or philosophy’ “.
I appreciate the author’s insinuation that one can understand the world though science, philosophy and religion. Actually I am convinced that it will be possible to show that for some of the most fundamental aspects of our realities these three domains: religion, science and philosophy, will be shown to have ultimately to compulsorily converge towards the same ultimate views and interestingly initially only a scientific breakthrough will permit that intellectual integration to eventually occur. This is because science will always be the domain of final explanation while religion/philosophy will be the domains of interpretation. They will all generally agree about the scientific explanation and the philosophical interpretation of our realities. It is however very interesting that the author says he is an atheist for that brings me to this important observation. I have already referred to the likely possibility of the convergence of those three domains to understand what we really are. I wonder whether atheists, who have their own manner of appreciating our realities, would be prepared to accept that there was a mind, of course not necessarily meaning a Creator, behind the creation of our universe. Einstein was very highly gifted to have remarked, in the early 20th century, that he earnestly wished to understand the mind behind the universe. In other words would this “mind” be another way of describing a Creator or God or could it be an independent way of attributing the whole universe and existence to a logic behind it all, and not necessarily synonymous with an active Creator. If that is possible would not that be a better way of describing what is atheistic belief. Would that not be a better way of equating the atheistic belief to the author’s comment in this quote from the article:
“Plato, speaking through Socrates, is implying that we, like his prisoners, only see shadows of appearances of real objects and hardly the actual fundamental nature of what is causing them. To grasp the real nature we need to free ourselves from the chains and leave the cave. “
The issue of transcendence, right highlighted by the author, often comes up with discussions of topics of the origin and nature of the universe. I often feel that transcendence seems to be a basket where we seem to be putting everything we do not understand like metaphysics and mysterious notions of abstract science and physics which might have led to the origin of our universe and our realities. What I understand by transcendence, to meet the aspirations of both theists and atheists, is how did the Mind I referred to above (which atheists would relate to a symbolical explanation of what is behind our existence and the theists’ notion of God or Creator) manage to inculcate our realities of existence within the materialistic universe we see around us. Some of these have been cited by Vedral for instance the pursuit of happiness, the notion of transcendence, the meaning of life, an explanation of how we came to be, and above all the extraordinary existence of order in the universe, which Einstein argues should not necessarily be a priori a reality.
On the issue of QM I tend to believe it englobes a physical peculiarity that has mysterious manifestations but their interpretations have to my mind been given notions disproportionate with what they could actually be. I prefer to believe that they are peculiarities of the smallest entities of existence. As existence becomes more important say atoms and then molecules and so on, we simultaneously see higher levels of organization and of existence. These higher levels assume greater transparency compared to quantum existence or what the author refers to as existing in different places simultaneously but which I would describe as being very difficult to pinpoint where they are at any particular point in time. So it is much easier to say where is a molecule than where is the electron. So finally we have the macroscale universe which has properties very different from the microscale quantum reality say the electron. I would certainly never argue that we humans could simultaneously exist at any point in time in this universe and in others, here and there and so on. We have to continue to believe as Einstein did, that the universe is comprehensible and I will in my future papers show how that could actually be the best way of describling our existence. I will also show to what extent and how we can combine QM and GR/SR.
“Darwin has showed us how biological order and complexity can arise through random mutation and with the aid of natural selection.”
Biological order and complexity has to already exist before there can be any natural selection. Natural selection won’t take place in a pile of rocks. There first had to be self replicating, metabolizing chemical/cellular units of some kind and an environment that would sustain this activity. The functional complexity of such units and the intricate, very precise environment required to allow their metabolism and reproduction to continue long enough for natural selection to have an effect is not something that is arrived at mindlessly and accidentally. Even the simplest single-celled, reproducing life forms known to us consist of nanotechnology the functional complexity of which light years beyond anything modern science knows how to build from scratch. And any attempt to create even significantly less functionally complex nanotechnology requires the very precise, intelligently designed environment of a laboratory.
Darwin showed us no more than dog breeders showed us: that there is wild variety possible within a given kind. But while a genome allows for variety it also sets limits to it. Dogs remain dogs. They are never bred into cats. This is because the information to build one species just isn’t in the genome of another.
Darwin demonstrated nothing that we didn’t already know. He didn’t demonstrate that “biological order and complexity can arise through random mutation and with the aid of natural selection.” He took what dog breeders had already demonstrated and extrapolated from that, essentially, that dogs might indeed be bred into cats over time. That may be so, but believing it requires one to ignore the very real limits a genome sets on the allowable variety within its own kind, and to believe sophisticated nanotechnology consisting of massive functional complexity and intricacy can remain functional, and even increase in functional complexity, while sustaining ongoing mindless, accidental modifications. That is much easier to believe if one has no experience with the creation and repair of complex technology.
Biological order and complexity didn’t arise from natural selection and random mutations. Natural selection is only made possible due to pre-existing biological order and complexity; the imagined capacity of natural selection and random mutations to bring about entirely new species remains undemonstrated.
“I am an atheist both intellectually and sentimentally.” Thank you for clarifying your baseline belief system. I would describe myself as a reformed theist, having traveled a path that includes periods of humanism, agnosticism and study of eastern and western worldviews. I have been led back to theism as the only coherent and comprehensive hypothesis for the being and becoming of the universe as a whole and of each of our lives in their unique particularity.
I do agree that it is “unwarranted and most likely wrong to try to imprint our human feelings onto the rest of the universe.” The reverse, however, is true: our human feelings, indeed our lives in their totality, are the consequence of the universe imprinting itself on our experience. There is an immensely rich and complex order and structure in that imprinting. Increasingly, in the fields of mathematics and empirical science through the 20th and 21st century, we have found this complexity to be impenetrable and even paradoxical.
You’ve noted one potential paradox: “… while the entropy of the whole universe might well be zero (meaning there is no randomness at the highest level), we all see finite entropy locally (i.e. randomness arises precisely because we ignore all the entanglements with the rest!)” For me, the absence of randomness is the same as complete purposefulness or Divine Intentionality, and “ignoring all the entanglements” sounds remarkably like the inability to perceive Divine Providence.
In this new comment author Vedral makes a point of immense historical and philsophical importance. In response to my query on whether atheists would be prepared to accept an impersonal ‘mind’ to be behind the creation of our intelligent universe he agrees that that would be quite acceptable to him. In my opinion that with a bit more substance would see a turning point in what has often been an acrimonious and often daft debate between atheists and theists. We see hope that if this trend of accepting this “Mind” as being important for the creation of the universe, then theists and atheist would find an intellectually interesting debate on how each group views the nature and scope of that mind. Issues like what humankind stands for, morality, immortality and being pious, grateful and so on would find a better platform in intellectually positive discussions.
Thanks to Vlatko Vedral for this inspiring article and I would like to suggest that besides Physics there is another human activity that “brings us out of the cave” and reveals “the non-obvious aspect of the universe” which is mind looking directly at mind – commonly referred to as phenomenology in the West and mindfulness awareness meditation in the East. Whereas science generally takes the dualistic relationship of subject and object for granted in appreciating “what” is actually observing “what”; does not question the vital role of “memory” in givng the impression of continuity and assumes “time”‘ is “real” when making observations, the disciplines developed particularly in the East have been able to explore what is real without such assumptions through consciousness examining consciousness. It is becoming poplular now for science to study the “brains” of people who are cultivating mind looking directly at mind disciplines, so maybe in the near future scientists and phenomenologists can walk out of cave of shadows together!
Thanks again for such a stimulating conversation.
Hi Prof. Vedral and thanks very much for the article and discussion. I’ve recently come across an interview with Prof. Jeff Tollaksen to do with the issue of time symmetry in quantum mechanics
http://www.closertotruth.com/series/what-ultimate-reality#video-3125
and he talks of his groups studies of “weak measurements”. But in this he mentions about new “rich structures” of time and also of nonlocality. Although I studied QM at university a while ago I always thought there was only one kind of nonlocality. The interview is a fascinating one on “What is ultimate reality?” and it seems that though on the surface (as I studied QM!) you’ve just got probabilities and wave functions etc. it seems, as I understood the interview, that really these are just an expression of these “rich structures” which are more fundamental. But does this mean there could be more beneath this even? So I wonder could this greater subtlety have a bearing on the issue of observers and mind. There just seems to be so much more going on. I hope these a fairly sensible questions!
These are very sensible points indeed. Weak measurements are actually just part of standard quantum mechanics. In the language I have been using throughout this exchange, a weak measurement simply implies that the measurement apparatus gets weakly entangled with the system we are observing. This leads to some interesting possibilities. One is that we can measure a system, say an electron, to be in one place, but we can actually also measure one of its properties (such as its spin) to be as though it is coming from the same electron but located in another physical place! Weird though this may be, it is no weirder than the phenomenon of entanglement which is ultimately responsible for it (Schroedinger called entanglement “the characteristic trait of quantum physics” because he thought this was the only mystery that really needs to be explained).
So weak measurements are nothing really new in quantum physics, though they do help us understand the full implications of quantum physics beyond just the standard von Neumann measurements (or the strong measurements). It should be said, of course, that time and space are still “mere classical variables” in the quantum formalism, however, there are arguments to be made that time and space too need to be quantized. This already tells us there is probably much more out there than our current understanding suggests. Quantizing space and time is still an outstanding problem and it is by no means clear that weak measurements will help us with this at all.
Thank you for the information on WM and I do try to follow some of these rather stranger aspects of QM that are implied (as you say) from entanglement. Really, just one more…”time and space are still “mere classical variables” in the quantum formalism“, you said and (and going off topic here) I’ve often thought that time and space really arise from the classical picture…so we experience time flow or a sequence of “nows” (which doesn’t seem to occur in Nature – at minimum the space-time picture of relativity) and this gets initially put into Newtons laws. Of course this all works but…Then another formalism for classical mechanics is of course the Hamilton-Jacobi equation (H+dS/dt = 0) picture which looks very like (and one can kind of get to) the Schrodinger equation but still time and space are in there! So I just wonder with this retrocausal picture (that is spoken of in the link I gave) in QM, that Nature is telling us that the intial incorporation of “time” is mistaken and one should somehow look for a no-time picture at “base” somehow?? There was something very interesting recently by Ronald Gruber (Stanford) and Richard Block (Montana) where they actually showed experimentally that our (classical of course) experience of time is an illusion and Dr. Gruber also commented on the illusory aspects of space. So can something purely informational as a base (CM and QM) lead to anything worthwhile here? And to mix even further our consciousness/awareness makes sense of all this! Just some ideas…and regards again.
Every agent is situated and conditioned and having some personal knowledge ofreality.That is individual`s human-condition.
Automamatic changes of this condition in a limited way are permitted by neuroplastic brain based
on experience.
Transcendance is a state of total freedom from this condition.We go for this freedom
if there is something bothering in experience.
Agents encounter and deal with reality at classical level.
The conceptual quantum theories must be able to explain the reality at classical level.
(The entire classical world built by our senses and brain cannot be illusory.)
Hey there. Seems I’m late to this discussion. Loving the insights shared in the article and the comments thread. Here’s my two cents worth…
1. Should QP be taught in schools? Yes definitely. Maybe then we wouldn’t get so caught up on concepts like non-locality being so “spooky”. A more intuitive understanding, embedded from an earlier age would give likely give us the mental faculties to push beyond current thinking. Interesting to note how so many quantum physicists work has been hindered/ halted by a conflict in their belief system, too.
2. If not for academia’s sake, for technology? Yes, absolutely. If knowledge of the theory is more widely spread this means that as a society we can actually start to have a relationship with it – to put it to use. To find symmetries to help in other areas. Perhaps even to think more creatively. There is no question that QP gives us insight into a new reality beyond our everyday experience. Who know where else this thinking can be applied until more people are engaged with it….
This will lead to more funding (!), more applications, more talent being pulled into the subject matter, more competition, more discoveries and more mind-blowing insights to fuel the eternal quest for understanding the universe.
3. Does QP indicate the ultimate nature of reality might be beyond the human power of understanding?
Well, it certainly goes beyond our day-to-day experience, and therefore our intuition (possibly, depending on your definition of intuition), but if we can lean on the mathematics, and what keeps getting supported experimentally, why would understanding QP be any different from understanding that the planets orbit the sun? As children we’re told that there are planets out there in our solar system, and we’re shown paper-mache models (or cgi simulations probably more accurately now)… and we accept it. I think what is essential is a willingness to challenge assumptions, entertain new paradigms and keep applying imagination to drive our hypotheses forward.
Also – understanding is rooted in language.
If an individual lacks the language to express a concept then that concept remains vague in his mind until he finds the appropriate words/ pictures/ analogies.
QP can be grasped using abstracting thinking, and mathematics. (I used to recall seemingly absurd ideas suddenly making sense when the proof was presented.)
Language is our bridge to new ideas, new concepts, more sophisticated models to describe this thing we call reality. [Yet to find an accurate definition of reality: but recall something about it ‘not going away when you close your eyes’ is a layman’s working definition…. Can’t really be applied to QP though – re: observe effect, more than the particles being tiny… ;).]
However, just as words are the signs of things, rather than the things themselves, it is perhaps also fair to say that true human understanding lies beyond the approximate models we use. “A rose by any other name….”
I suspect the question within the question is perhaps asking, do we have the mental faculties to really comprehend the mysteries of the universe?
As far as I am aware, most recent leaps in our understanding of QP have been made by extraordinary individuals. These guys operated at upper end of the intelligence/ creative bell curve, suggesting that there is something to do with the hard wiring of the brain that allow someone to grasp the givens of the problem in the first place, and then make the necessary creative leaps.
Whilst we’re talking language and thinking ability – chimps can develop human language abilities… and then their language stops evolving at roughly the developmental level of a five year old human child. It’s believed they simply don’t develop sophisticated enough neurology to support further learning. We see this in children at the age of 6 and 7 as well for instance. At the age of 6 they are prone to making certain spelling errors (concatenation errors). By age 7, this error disappears – as if the brain has developed sufficiently to take on the insight.
If symmetries in human and animal language are to be taken as indicators, perhaps we will find ourselves at a plateau of understanding, scrambling around with the crutch of mathematics, appending constants, trying hopelessly to make sense of the craziness of the universe around us…
Oh wait, sorry, I was channelling feelings of having worked on string theory… My bad 😉
On a more theological note: some work in the area of kinesiology and the levels of consciousness (Prof. D Hawkins) suggest that mathematics operates at a level of logic and to start to make sense of these deeper questions we need to attain a higher awareness… a higher calibration of consciousness. (This theory does have by-passing the grey-matter construction issue as an advantage….) He has enlightenment at ‘calibration’ of 1000.
So this (theological side-bar) would raise two questions:
1. Can we understand the universe at the level of conventional logic? (400 on his calibrated scale of “consciousness”). Or do we need to evolve our awareness?
2. Is the state of enlightenment the only place to reach this understanding or are these two different things: understanding reality and reaching enlightenment? I think I know which you’d go with, Prof. V. Two different things, right? lol
Similarly with philosophy, which in a way is an extrapolation of common sense. I think we are still allowed to have any metaphysical bias and physics will not be able to change this or disprove it in any way (hence “metaphysics”). We can either be realists or idealists in the light of quantum physics (though we cannot be local realists!).
And at an even more general level, the way we practice quantum physics is no different to any other science. We examine a situation, translate it into mathematics (of quantum theory), derive consequences using the rules of mathematics, and then translate this back into physics to make a prediction. Then we do a suitable experiment and the prediction is either falsified or not. This is as real as anything else in science. However, we cannot say that an atom either exists here or does not, since it can be in a superposition of these two states according to quantum physics. So we cannot be naïve realists, but we can certainly be realists. The same goes for any other metaphysics, I believe.
Finally, as far as enlightenment, I am probably the least qualified person to comment. This already proves that one can appreciate quantum physics and not be enlightened. The converse was presumably demonstrated two and a half millennia ago by Siddhartha Gautama, who was (allegedly) the first enlightened human, but clearly did not know anything about quantum physics.
… there have been instances of individuals predicting the plank scale through meditation/ enlightenment. Will have to look up references though. And I take on board your points on all of the above too.
Prof. Vedral is one of a few, in my view, who have convincingly realized that information lies at the root of the ingenuity of the realities of the universe. To some important extent to arrive at such a conclusion is possible though appreciating the properties of quantum physics. Croft has raised the issue of whether enlightenment could be crucial in understanding the mysteries of the basic realities of life and of the universe. I am totally in agreement with Vedral’s cautious approach to describe why we have problems understanding the deeper realities of existence whether through quantum theory or through deterministic probes but I fail to understand how enlightenment of a spiritual kind could lead to piercing the exact basis of our origin and realities. However I am convinced that intellectual and scientific enlightenment as exhibited by ancient and more modern and contemporary philosophers and scientists like Einstein and Vedral do make it possible to develop a meaningful understanding of our mysterious nature. In my reflections of such issues I am convinced that many suppositions or unproven ideas in terms of what relativity, quantum physics and even of what could be the deeper truth behind the Standard Model constitute very serious bottlenecks in arriving at a faster rate towards elucidating the nature and meaning of existence. Hawking’s prediction that a theory of everything would be certainly arrived at towards the end of the 20th century obviously did not materialize for similar reasons. It is however possible in my view to arrive at a theory of everything that would lead to dramatic understanding of what is essence the Mind behind us and the universe and how it functions and that will be an explanation that will be mainly conceptual and philosophical and not just simply a mathematical one that would explain all. It is not possible to arrive at a TOE solely on basis of scientific reasoning.
I have indeed been promoting the idea that information is potentially a deeper concept than other we have in science today. It somehow feels that it ought to be prior to concepts such as matter and energy and space and time. Furthermore quantum information is capable of being created out of nowhere as it were. We can start with no information (or with maximum information) and make a measurement that creates (new) information no matter what the prior state. Having said that, it is certainly not possible at present to formally derive the rest of physics from information alone. In many ways this is work in progress.
Vlatko Vedral
“We can start with no information…”
OK, how?
Long before there is even an awareness that information exists at the conceptual level at all, a ‘spatiality’ of consciousness has *created* itself–this occurs aconceptually at the level of neurological reflex; so, yes, it must be “prior to concepts” themselves–as an ‘entity’ in some way ‘separate from’ or ‘other than’ the physical reality. That may very well not be information in the technical or intellectual sense; but it is ‘information’ to the extent that it is an immediate neurological, and then psychological response, however aconceptual, to parallel ‘information’ from the environment, whose purpose is the self-preservation of the human organism and the individualized consciousness.
The fundamental issue, then, is the *prioritization* of information: Is information from the “head” or information from the “heart” more crucial to the survival of this civilization?
The answer to that question should be obvious to anyone who reads the news…
Which at least appears to raise the question as to whether this “work in progres” will be given sufficient *time* to “progress” at all.
Michael
ntadepalli
And what is the original ‘classical’ space?
The ‘spatiality’ within which the consciousness of the “self” exists.
And what is the original ‘classical’, uni-directional time?
The continuity of that ‘spatiality’ of the “self” from moment to moment; without which that consciousness would collapse into psychosis; as indicated in the opening passages of the Second Meditation of Descartes.
These things cannot simply be ignored in the description of the physical-conscious reality.
The scientific method and quantum physics are the definition of reality from tmerely he perspective of the consciousness of the ‘thinker’ and the “head”; whereas immediate sensations and perceptions of the physical reality–and, for example, emotions, poetry and the lyrics of songs–are a non-rational description of reality from the perspective of the consciousness of the “self” and the heart.
Yet, from the Eastern traditions, there is also another perspective on reality; the perspective of a consciousness beyond both the “self” and the ‘thinker’ referred to as the “observing consciousness”.
The consciousness of the “self” and the ‘thinker’ is a dualistic (or, in the monotheistic traditions, ‘fallen’ ) consciousness; and, thus, the consciousness of conflict and violence.
More important than teaching quantum physics in school–that is, another analysis of the dualistic, consciousness of the ‘thinker’–is the teaching of the existence of a dimension of consciousness beyond conflict and violence in order that this civilization not be annihilated.
That is orders of magnitude more important than the teaching of quantum physics.
http://science-of-consciousness.blogspot.com/2011/04/towards-new-paradigm-of-consciousness-i.html
Michael