Quantum Reality

1. Quantum Reality • Mind/Body Health • RRCC Holistic Health • Fall 2013

2. Western Body,Western Mind • Some mysteries • Consciousness- the “hard problem” • The nature of thought • Cellular organization • Speed of molecular processing • Limb development • Wound healing/regeneration • The nature of knowing • Brain development, perception, memory • Learning, decision-making • Spontaneous remission • Psychosomatic illness • Placebo effect (20-40% of positive responses) • Material realism- universe made of material objects separate from and independent of the observer • Objectivity- separation between subject and object • Separation between human and world, mind and body • Replicability- observer doesn’t affect experiment • Reductionism- understand whole by understanding parts • Determinism- all motion can be predicted exactly • Atomism- everything made up of small particles • Mechanism- particles interact like billiard balls or gears • Body as machine- like clocks, powered by chemicals and genes

3. Holistic Bodymind • Universe made of energy • Universal energy field • Consciousness • Interconnection the basic reality • Separations are surface appearances • The essence of existence is unity • Mind and body are forms of energy • Bodymind- nonphysical thoughts and emotions affect, and are affected by, the physical body • One interconnected whole • Wisdom of body and nature • Primary perception- slime molds • Prana- Hindu • Ki- Japanese • Qi- Chinese • Lung- Tibetan • Mana- Polynesian • Pneuma- Greek • Ruach- Hebrew • Ra- Egyptian • Oki, orenda, ton- Native American • Subtle energy, bioenergy- Western

4. Mystical Reality • Mystical consciousness appears in all historical ages, • all parts of the world, and all religious systems, • and it manifests in similar or identical forms wherever present • Catherine Adorno- Christian- “My being is God, not by simple participation, but by a true transformation of my being.” • Hui Neng- Zen- “Our very self-nature is Buddha, and apart from this nature there is no other Buddha.” • Ibn al-Arabi- Sufi- “Thou art neither ceasing to be nor still existing. Thou art He, without one of these limitations. Then if thou know thine own existence thus, then thou knowest God, and if not, then not.” • Moses de Leon- Kabbalah- “God… when he has just decided to launch upon his work of creation is called He. God in the complete unfolding of his Being, Bliss, and Love, in which he becomes capable of being perceived by the reasons of the heart… is called You. But God, in his supreme manifestation, where the fullness of His Being finds its final expression in the last and all-embracing of his attributes, is called I.” • Yeshe Tsogyel, consort of Padmasambhava- Tantric Buddhism- “But when you finally discover me, the one naked Truth arisen from within, Absolute Awareness permeates the Universe.” • Meister Eckhart- Dominican- “In this breaking-through I receive that God and I are one. Then I am what I was, and then I neither diminish nor increase, for I am then an immovable cause that moves all things.” • Monsoor al-Halaj- Sufi- “I am the truth!” • Shankara- Hindu- “I am reality without beginning, without equal. I have no part in the illusion of ‘I’ and ‘you,’‘this’ and ‘that.’ I am Brahman, one without a second, bliss without end, the eternal, unchanging truth. … I dwell within all beings as the soul, the pure consciousness, the ground of all phenomena, internal and external. I am both the enjoyer and that which is enjoyed. In the days of my ignorance, I used to think of these as being separate from myself. Now I know that I am All.” • Jesus- Christian- “My father and I are one.” (John 10:30)

5. The Perennial Philosophy • Aldous Huxley- PP concerned with “the one, divine Reality substantial to the manifold world of things and lives and minds. But the nature of this one Reality is such that it cannot be directly or immediately apprehended except by those who have chosen to fulfill certain conditions, making themselves loving, pure in heart, and poor in spirit." • Four assertions: • 1. The phenomenal world of matter and individual consciousness is partial, a manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their being and without which they would not exist. • 2. Humans can know about Divine Ground through not just inference, but direct intuition, which is superior to discursive reason and which in some way unites the knower with the known. • 3. Humans have a double nature- a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self. It is possible, if one so desires and makes the necessary efforts, to identify with the true Self and thus the Divine Ground. • 4. It is the central purpose of earthly existence to discover and identify with the true Self. This allows intuitive knowledge of the Divine Ground and the true nature of reality. This is called eternal life, salvation, nirvana, samadhi, enlightenment, etc.

6. A History of Physics • Physis-the essential nature of all things • Greece, 6th century BCE - debate about “one” or “many” • Iron Age • Monotheism • Milesian school- “hylozoists,” or those who think matter is alive- no distinction between spirit and matter • Heraclitus- continuous flow and change- dynamic and cyclic interplay of opposites- pairs of opposites as unity • Atomism- 5th century BCE- Democritus and Leucippus • Atom as smallest indivisible unit of matter- indestructible building blocks (a-tomos) • Dead particles moving in the void- motion explained by “external forces which were assumed to be of spiritual origin and fundamentally different from matter” • All other things exist because they’re made of atoms • Democritus:“By convention sour, by convention sweet, by convention colored; in reality, nothing but Atoms and the Void.” • Atoms indestructible because made of Being; Void exists to allow for properties of the atom like position and motion • Split between spirit and matter, physical and nonphysical • This split persisted- Church and science dividing turf during Renaissance • Plato- Form gives rise to properties of matter- the Idea is more fundamental than the object- disagreed with atomism

7. Scientific Revolution • Copernicus- 1543- heliocentric model • Descartes (1596-1650)- extreme formulation of spirit/matter dualism • Material world as huge machine • World can be described objectively without mentioning observer • Laplace, French mathematician: “An intellect which at a given instant knew all the forces acting in nature, and the position of all things of which the world consists- supposing the said intellect were vast enough to subject these data to analysis- would embrace in the same formula the motions of the greatest bodies in the universe and those of the slightest atoms; nothing would be uncertain for it, and the future, like the past, would be present to its eyes.” • Newton (1643-1727)- Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica • Gravity- force between solid material objects moving through absolute space and time- connected with material bodies and acting instantaneously over a distance • Laws of motion- particles created by God and therefore not subject to further analysis- universe made of particles set in motion, governed by force of gravity, and running like a machine since creation- giant cosmic machine, causal and determinate • Annus mirabilis- 1665- gravitation, laws of motion, calculus, prism • “Absolute space,in its own nature, without regard to anything external, remains always similar and immovable.” • “Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself and by its own nature, flows uniformly, without regard to anything external.” • Also fluid mechanics, planetary motion, nature of light, phenomenon of tides • This worked to explain: the motion of solid and falling bodies, the motion of celestial bodies, the features of the solar system, the motion of fluids, the vibrations of elastic bodies, and thermodynamics. • Copernicus, Bruno, Galileo and others repressed by Church • Methods of Inquisition in turn applied to natural world • Bacon- “Torture nature for her secrets” “cogito ergo sum” “It seems probable to me that God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end to which he formed them; and that these primitive particles being solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies compounded of them; even so very hard as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary power being able to divide what God himself made in the first creation.“

8. Electromagnetism • Maxwell and Faraday- 1860’s- EM field laws- condition in space with the potential of producing a force • Electromagnetic waves travel at speed of light • Light as EM wave • Existence of other EM waves higher and lower • Hertz- radio waves- low frequency • Roentgen- X-rays- high frequency • These are all manifestations of a single physical field • Field- medium or matrix which connects two or more points in space through a force, like gravity or EM • Classical physics- real matter, real fields • Newton- matter’s laws of motion • Field law of gravity • Universe made of matter and fields

9. A CircleClosing? • This all undermined church authority and elevated authority of science • Nature now as “Great Machine” • Eventually science challenged religious teaching- everything, including mind and consciousness, made of matter (including physical energy and fields) • Ken Wilber: “Most branches of science remain today thoroughly and solidly dualistic, hotly pursuing as they are the “objective facts,” but some of the “purer” forms of science, such as physics and mathematics, and some of the emergent sciences, such as systems theory and ecology, have dealt lethal blows to several long-cherished dualisms. ... Nevertheless, all of these forms of science are relatively recent inventions, being hardly 300 years old, and thus it is only in recent history that we have started to see the elimination of the dualisms that have plagued Western thought for 25 centuries. There is no doubt that all sciences began as pure dualisms - some, however... pursued their dualisms to the “annihilating edge,” and for those scientists involved, there awaited the shock of their lives.”

10. 20th Century Physics • 1900- Max Planck- black-body radiation • Physicists- should glow blue at all temperatures and be rich in UV radiation • Planck’s constant h in E=hf • Particles can have only certain quanta of energy, multiples of their frequency, not all values • Structure of nature discontinuous • 1905- Einstein’s Annus Mirabilis • Photoelectric effect- light can knock electrons out of metal • Frequency mattered, not intensity • Light is a particle (photon), using Planck’s h • Energy itself is quantized • Brownian motion- micron-sized particles suspended in liquid quiver perpetually • Biological phenomenon? Temp gradients, surface tension, EM effects? • Einstein- atoms in motion colliding with the particle • Evidence for atoms • Perrin- 1913- counted atoms in a drop of water • Special theory of relativity- length and time depend on observer’s velocity, not absolute • Speed of light universal speed limit • Space-time continuum- four-dimensional • Classical (electrical/mechanical) equations written for 3D plus time work for stationary but not moving observers • Space curves around large bodies • Time relative to observer position • E = mc2 - Energy-matter equivalence • Classical physics complete- real matter and real fields • Relativity kept Maxwell’s laws, updated Newton’s for large masses and high velocities • These completely and consistently describe all classical motion

11. Quantum Leaps • Rutherford- 1911- atom as tiny solar system- heavy (+) nucleus, (-) electrons • But orbits unstable, should decay into nucleus • Niels Bohr- 1913- quantum leaps inside atoms • Light emitted as a quantum as electrons jump from higher to lower orbital • Ground state- the lowest level- stable • Electron does not cross intervening space • No way to predict when or where it will leap-no external or internal cause • Heated objects glow because electrons excited, release photons going back to ground state • Each element has spectral pattern • Atoms made up of vast empty spaces- in a hydrogen atom the size of St. Peter’s Cathedral (largest dome in the world), the nucleus would be a grain of salt! • All elementary particles- electrons, quarks, leptons, gluons- likely point particles • Compton scattering- 1923- X-rays bouncing off electrons- EM radiation acting like particle • Louis de Broglie- 1924- each particle of matter associated with a wave • Matter has wave properties • Matter and fields both made of same “substance” • Erwin Schrödinger- 1926- wave equation for matter-dual nature of matter • Identity of atoms- wave patterns in confinement

12. Double-Slit • Wave diffraction through two slits creates an interference pattern • Young 1803- DS with light- light is a wave • Einstein- photoelectric effect- light is a particle • Quantum DS- Electrons and other physical particles create interference pattern • Even when fired one at a time • Quantum superposition-the electron exists as a probability wave, going through one slit, the other, both, and neither, all at once, until it’s observed/measured • Collapse of the wave function-electrons as particles when observed- no interference • Many (coherent) possibilities collapse into one observed reality- decoherence • Schrödinger’s Cat-observer effect • Observer part of system- experimenter not separate from experiment • How do the electrons know when we’re watching?

13. Delayed Choice • Double-slit, but chosen en route “It was taught by the Buddha, oh Monks, that… the past, the future, physical space,… and individuals are nothing but names, forms of thought, words of common usage, merely superficial realities.” -Madhyamika Karika Vrtti “Be it clearly understood that space is nothing but a mode of particularization and that it has no real existence of its own. …Space exists only in relation to our particularizing consciousness.“ -Ashvaghosha “In this spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, present, and future; for they have contracted themselves into a single moment of the present where life quivers in its true sense. …The past and the future are both rolled up in this present moment of illumination, and this present moment is not something standing still with all its contents, for it ceaselessly moves on.” -D.T. Suzuki “Let us forget the lapse of time; let us forget the conflict of opinions. Let us make our appeal to the infinite, and take up our positions there.“ -Chuang Tzu

14. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle • Werner Heisenberg- 1927- Uncertainty Principle ∆p ∆x ≥ ħ/2 • Indeterminacy- possible to measure paired dynamic attributes of a quantum particle only so precisely • “The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in that instant, and vice versa.” • Future of particle not possible to determine completely • At first, explained as disturbance of electron (or other quantum particle) by photon used to make measurement • Later- inherent in the nature of the particle, not about disturbance of system by measurement, not technological issue, not observer effect • Zitterbewegung-“jitter motion”- random fluctuations of point particles • Quantum fluctuations in position and momentum existing whether measured or not, can’t be suppressed below a certain limit simultaneously • Typical atomic vibration rate 1013 Hz • HUP prevents electrons from approaching the nucleus too closely • Too close, and location precisely known • Velocity then uncertain • Electron acquires enormous speed, keeping it out of the nucleus • Also energy and time • Elementary (point) particles interact with each other by exchanging energy through “virtual particles” • These appear out of nowhere and disappear quickly • Usually pairs, like electron and positron • A subatomic event happening in a very small time has a very uncertain energy • Which can be large enough to very briefly create virtual particles- electron fuzz

15. Quantum Theory • Mathematical representation of “quons,” the basic substance of the physical universe • A quantity standing for the substance • A law describing how the quantity changes with different conditions • A rule of correspondence saying how to translate the symbols into activities in the world • Wave function psi (ψ) - like other waves- amplitude, phase, superposition, interference • Probability wave- carries no energy, not directly detectable- “presence density” • Quantum attributes represented by waveforms • Many forms- all satisfy the data • Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Dirac, Born- 1920‘s; Feynman- late 1940’s • Probability waves • At the subatomic level, matter has “tendencies to exist,” atomic events “tendencies to occur” • Niels Bohr: “Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems.” • Quantum theory correctly predicts all measurable quantum facts, and more • Accurate every time so far • Correctly describes all presently conceivable experiments • At this point (late 1920’s and onward)... • Instrumentalism- most physicists- “Shut up and calculate!” • Physics (and science) as a symbolic tool to manipulate the world and to understand and explain phenomena,not the nature of reality • Focus on applications- laser, transistor, microchip, electron microscope, MRI, electronics, atomic weapons • Phenomenalism- knowledge advances from new experiments uncovering novel phenomena and new mathematics explaining or predicting phenomena in original ways • A few physicists- exploring QP as a window into reality • Quantum interpretation question- what does the wave function mean? • Quantum measurement question- what happens during a measurement?