User:Peterdjones/Quantum mysticism

Emily Rosa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Rosa

Gell-Man
At the time I was interested in India and in the various religious traditions of India — not that I would embrace any religion — my interest was merely academic. I thought it would be a good joke to call the scheme the eightfold way, since the particles tended in many cases to come in sets of eight. Some silly people wrote books trying to connect my work on particle physics with oriental mysticism, whereas the connection was only a joke.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gell-mann03/gell-mann_print.html

Wigner
CC mysticiism and dechoherence

Physicists have been at war for the last century trying to explain how it is that the fog of quantum possibilities prescribed by mathematical theory can condense into one concrete actuality, what physicists call "collapsing the wavefunction." Half a century ago the physicist and Nobel Prize winner Eugene Wigner ventured that consciousness was the key to this mysterious process.

Wigner thereby, and inadvertently, launched a thousand New Age dreams. Books like "The Tao of Physics" and "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" have sought to connect quantum physics to Eastern mysticism. Deepak Chopra, the physician and author, has founded a career on the idea of "quantum healing," and a school of parapsychology has arisen based on the idea that things like telekinesis and telepathy were a result of probing minds' manipulation of the formless quantum potential. And now the movie.

Many physicists today say the waves that symbolize quantum possibilities are so fragile they collapse with the slightest encounter with their environment. Conscious observers are not needed. As Dr. Albert pointed out, Wigner framed the process in strict mathematical and probabilistic terms. "The desires and intentions of the observer had nothing to do with it," he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/science/14essa.html

Bohr
As Marin explains, the debate of consciousness in quantum theory began around 1927 when Einstein accused Neils Bohr of introducing a mysticism incompatible with science. Bohr denied the accusation and blamed it on Einstein misunderstanding him when he said that humans are both actors and observers in the world http://www.physorg.com/news163670588.html

Pauli
On the other hand, Wolfgang Pauli truly did harbor some of the views that Einstein accused Bohr of. Pauli favored a hypothesis of “lucid mysticism,” a synthesis between rationality and religion. He speculated that quantum theory could unify the psychological/scientific and philosophical/mystical approaches to consciousness. Pauli’s perspective was influenced by the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, whose views on reality were in turn influenced by Eastern religions. http://www.physorg.com/news163670588.html

Planck
Still other physicists had different views. Marin argues that Max Planck, an adherent of Christianity, framed the controversy as the objectivity of science and Christianity against the mysticism of Schopenhauer and his popularization of Buddhism and Hinduism. Planck considered religion (Christianity) and science compatible based on his opinion that they are both based on objectivity but refer to distinct facets of reality. Meanwhile, Paul Dirac rejected any kind of religious vocabulary, arguing that “religion is a jumble of false assertions with no basis in reality.” http://www.physorg.com/news163670588.html

Eddington
The mysticism controversy also expanded into the public realm, starting in 1929 with first astrophysicist Arthur Eddington’s popular book The Nature of the Physical World. Although the book distorted many concepts, his defense of mysticism caught the attention of the international media. (Eddington was most famous for confirming Einstein's theory of relativity by measuring an eclipse, which catapulted Einstein into fame.) http://www.physorg.com/news163670588.html

Heisenberg, Shrodinger
In the next few years Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger leaned toward the side of mysticism, irritating Einstein and Planck. For others, the choice was not clear cut. Marin argues that the mathematician John Von Neumann intentionally used ambiguous terms when discussing the philosophy of quantum equations, meaning he could fit on either side. “He was a genius at linguistic innovation and came up with German terms that could support many different interpretations,” Marin said. http://www.physorg.com/news163670588.html

In 1958, Schrödinger, inspired by Schopenhauer from youth, published his lectures Mind and Matter. Here he argued that there is a difference between measuring instruments and human observation: a thermometer’s registration cannot be considered an act of observation, as it contains no meaning in itself. Thus, consciousness is needed to make physical reality meaningful. As Schrödinger concluded, "Some of you, I am sure, will call this mysticism. So with all due acknowledgement to the fact that physical theory is at all times relative, in that it depends on certain basic assumptions, we may, or so I believe, assert that physical theory in its present stage strongly suggests the indestructibility of Mind by Time." http://www.physorg.com/news163670588.html

Margaret Wertheim
Quantum mysterions may embrace science in principle, but they have little more interest than creationists in learning about it in practice. Under their adoring gaze, the mathematical formalisms of quantum mechanics, which make concrete predictions accurate to dozens of decimal places and which underlie the technologies of microchips and lasers, are stripped of all empirical content and reduced to a set of syrupy nostrums. At the same time, quantum mysticism promotes a vision of spiritual satisfaction achieved not by the hard transformative work of ritual or study, but by the mechanism of consumer choice. In the infinite sea of possibility here promoted, nothing is real except what you choose to accept. Which is not that far from the creationist position — there, too, empirical evidence is brushed aside and reality becomes what you’d like it to be.

Victor Stenger
Stenger links "quantum mysticism" and "quantum quackery" on his website

CI does not imply CCC:

The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, promulgated by Niels Bohr in the 1930s and largely accepted as convention until recent years, says nothing about consciousness. However, it left the door open to misinterpretation with its positivist insistence that only what is measured can have any meaning. As is often heard in physics classrooms, "the electron has no position until that position is measured." Technically, this just means that we cannot include the electron's position in any theoretical equation until that position is measured. However, this unfortunate wording has led some to the logically fallacious inference that the electron does not exist as a real, localized particle until the performance of a conscious act of measurement.

Discusses Penrose and Paul Davies here

http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Quantum/mystic.pdf

J A Wheeler
"I do take 100 percent seriously the idea that the world is a figment of the imagination." - John A. Wheeler

Heisenberg/Tagore
On conversations with Rabindranath Tagore, as quoted in Uncommon Wisdom: Conversations With Remarkable People (1988) by Fritjof Capra, who states that after these "He began to see that the recognition of relativity, interconnectedness, and impermanence as fundamental aspects of physical reality, which had been so difficult for himself and his fellow physicists, was the very basis of the Indian spiritual traditions.