The Ineluctable Modality of the Material World PART 2
Posted: Sun Dec 01, 2019 3:21 pm
Continued from PART 1
Back to Jones. “All of the probability distributions are derived from a wave function, which is the most fundamental source of information we have for the electron. And the wave function or state vector is even more abstract and less physical than a probability distribution. It is a mathematical representation of the potential manifestation of an electron – its mass, charge, spin, etc… the wave function itself is neither the electron, nor its probability, nor anything whatsoever physical about the electron. The wave function isn’t the rabbit in the hat. It isn’t even the chances of pulling a rabbit out of the hat. It is the potentiality of all the possible rabbits, pigeons, and other apparitions that may be pulled from the hat. The wave function represents all the ways an electron may manifest itself in an observation. It is not any one of these manifestations, but rather, all of them taken together. In fact, the wave function is decidedly nonphysical, for it represents all possible manifestations of an electron, which are mutually contradictory. An observed electron cannot be in several places at once, and yet the electron’s wave function represents simultaneously all the possible places an electron can be; not to mention all the speeds, energies, etc., that an electron can have… it is a complete mathematical abstraction, and ironically is most often represented by imaginary numbers, which are themselves mathematical abstractions that cannot directly represent ‘physical reality.’”(75) “Schrodinger’s wave theory had not done away with atomic mysticism after all; it had only deepened its effect!”(76)
David Bohm, one of the most original thinking quantum physicists actually came up with a system whereby the particles were actual particles, and they behave classically. The details are far too numerous to go into in this paper, but I will continue showing them in others. His idea is quite wide and broad which is discussed by several authors, other than himself, in easier fashion, such as F. David Peat, and Tim Maudlin, among others. It is a fascinating thing to see how various interpreters are attempting to bring in or rather, keep in determinism and physicality, both of which quantum physics has undermined entirely. The “real” ain’t “real” and that bothers people. The pipedream that if we knew the original positions of all particles in the universe, and the direction and speed they were moving, we could completely predict the future is on the fundamental level impossible. Reality is sustained on the back of probability and abstraction, not certainty. God does play dice much to Einstein’s chagrine. Bohm’s ideas are among the strongest, but they haven’t caught on, a fact that puzzled both Peat and Maudlin as I shall show in future research.(77) For now a tantalizing glimpse suffices: “such principles as the observer is the observed, everything affects everything else, wholeness as flowing movement, the inanimate world as alive, a multidimensional reality, and the changeableness of the laws of nature,” are some of the issues Bohm took head on.(78)
Back to Jones. “Thus quantum physics provides no materialistic basis for the physical world. Its totally hypothetical abstractions, its patterns of potentiality, its nonphysical, unobservable wave functions are the only representations of electrons (or anything else) that quantum physics provides us with. They are completely immaterial, unpalpable and ideational. At the most basic level in quantum physics, an electron is nothing but an idea, a collection or array or pattern of abstract and imaginary numbers that suggests the idea or potentiality of what an electron may be or do. There is nothing meaty, solid, hard, impenetrable, or resistive about the quantum electron… to explain materiality and tangibility, science begrudges us only abstract equations, laws, and principles. When we delve into the nature of matter with the tools and concepts of modern science, we find no corporeal atoms, no hard little particles, nothing material at all, but only ‘such stuff’ as dreams are made on.
All the ‘evidence’ of our senses and experiences cannot guarantee any material basis for reality. In fact, science refutes it. But that does not alter our experience. Rather, it forces us to reinterpret it. It makes us bite the bullet, and then admit its atoms are more fanciful than real. Rocks will still feel hard and water wet, but we must entertain the thought that our minds – or Mind – are somehow involved in conjuring our experiences. For if mathematical abstraction and ideas are at the core of experience (or reality, if you prefer), then where do those ideas and equations reside? What is the realm or expressive instrument of idea and abstraction? What other than mind? Contrary to its reputation, science may force us to reject materialism and to embrace, instead an ideal or spiritual foundation for matter. We may just have to take quantum physics at face value and recognize in it the best argument we have that the world is an idea.”(79) Just holy cow man! Right? Yeah, that’s a jolt of electricity. The British astrophysicist Paul Davies is in complete agreement with Jones, or actually it is probably Davies who gives Jones his ideas in many regards, since Davies wrote before Jones: “Whereas the old physics generally employed everyday concepts of space, time, matter, differing from familiar experience only in degree, the new physics was formulated in terms of abstract mathematical entities and algorithms.”(80)
Byers gives us another zap that raises the hair on end:
“If mathematics cannot be accurately represented as isolated from its environment, it follows that an adequate description of mathematics will have to include the related processes of creating and understanding mathematics. The normal view is that there is an objective body of mathematical theory on the one side and, on the other, the mathematician who creates the theory or the consumer who uses it. The idea that there could be a point of view that contains both elements, that is, the introduction of this human element, changes everything. Mathematics is no longer a strictly ‘objective’ theory. ‘Objectivity’ is merely a description of one dimension of mathematics; that is, objectivity is merely an approximation to what is going on. It is one point of view – a useful one – but not the definitive one. If mathematics includes the mathematician, then it is reasonable to see intelligence as an essential ingredient of mathematics.”(81)
As one of my favorite authors, David Fideler has noted “Reality is thus something of a malleable and magical construction, based on what we invoke.”(82) Dana Wilde invokes in us a sense of wonder as he propounds that “immensity is a kind of surrealism. Subatomia is a kind of surrealism… immensity and subatomia are abstract, in the nature of principles rather than concretions. Some things are too big to see, other things are too small to see. As a result they must be imagined… when we speak of subatomic particles it is not the particles themselves we comprehend. Rather, it is the mathematical representation of the behavior of the particles that we comprehend. We do not even know what the particles look like, except as streaks on film, and the streaks are only indications of the particle’s existence, no more the particles themselves than a photograph of your brother lounging in the hammock under pine trees is your brother himself. So talk about particles is talk about what the particles are like; it is all metaphorical… what we comprehend is the metaphor, not the atom… the signifier is not the signified.”(83) What we imagine we make exhibited into the world, amazingly enough. Michael D. Fayer said it the most simply. “When a particle is in a superpositional state, a wave packet, we have some knowledge of its position and some knowledge of its momentum. So are photons, electrons, and so on waves or particles? They answer is that they are wave packets. Whether they seem to be particles or seem to be waves depends on what experiment you do, that is, what question you ask.”(84) Now, of course, he is talking about being in the scientific room with all the equipment of the double slit boards, the projector for photons, etc., and whether we leave one slit open or closed and shoot beams of photons through the slits. We don’t do this in just everyday living rooms of our houses. Or do we? I will discuss in detail all this in the 2nd part of my investigation. For now, I think John Gribbin, the Cambridge University astrophysicist has it about right, when he notes Einstein’s Theory of Relativity does not have numerous weird and contradictory interpretations of it, yet quantum physics does! And each one of them actually comply with some experiment or the other! Now that’s weird. I love the metaphor he notes Heinz Pagels used “we should learn a little bit about the quantum world from each of the interpretations, considering all of them together in a kind of superposition of possibilities.”(85)
It is remarkably interesting that Murray Gell-Mann, when he proposed his theory of quarks (taking the name from James Joyce’s book!) he found an underlying shape to the variegated particles that had been discovered. The eight baryons that were named up, down, and other strange quarks, he named the pattern “the eightfold way” which reminds us of the Buddha’s tenets for leading the good life and achieving enlightenment. Just one of those fun little things to notice.(86)
The Physicist John Wheeler said we are not even in a simply observer universe where we just look, but a participatory universe where we are directly involved. This interconnectedness includes us, not as being apart from nature, but a part of nature.(87) Donald Goldsmith proposed that one of the beauties of science is the skepticism. The more we seek rather than simply believe because we are told, even when experiments supposedly confirm a thing, the more apt we are to find truth or even more correct truth. “Scientific skepticism brings out the truth.”(88) And skepticism about scientific conclusions based on abstractions further help us find truth as this paper has demonstrated. There is more to the world than science has met and understood, no question about that. But as the physicist David Deutsch noted “It may seem strange that scientific instruments bring us closer to reality when in purely physical terms they only separate us further from it. But we observe nothing directly anyway. All observation is theory-laden.”(89) In his historical survey of reality, Carlo Rovelli described how Parmenides had explored the avenue of using reason alone in order to find the truth. He ended up admitting that “all appearances are illusory.”(90) It’s only taken another two millenia for us to catch up to Parmenides! Now this is not Rovelli’s conclusion as he sides with the atomists anciently and modern who say atoms are real physical entities, of which, as we have seen, he ought to revise his understanding. But old habits die hard. So what’s the take away in all this? It is very simple. “The aspiration to truth is more precious than its assured possession.”(91)
END PART 1
Endnotes
1. William York Tindall, “A Reader’s Guide to James Joyce,” Syracuse University Press, 1st Syracuse edition, 1995: 239.
2. Joseph Campbell, “Mythic Worlds, Modern Words,” HarperCollinsPublishers, 1993: 69.
3. Victor J. Stenger, “God and the Folly of Faith,” Prometheus Books, 2012: 212.
4. Robert B. Laughlin, “A Different Universe, Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down,” Basic Books, 2005: 138-139.
5. Roger S. Jones, in “Alexandria, the Journal of the Western Cosmological Tradition,” edited by David Fideler, Phanes Press, 2000: biographical note, p. 461. This journal, formed by David Fideler, unfortunately only lasted for 5 annual issues, though each is a book and smorgasbord of delightful investigations into issues of philosophy, music, art, religion, science, and culture. It is one of my very favorite sets of “books,” each coming in at a hefty 450-500 pages, giving plenty of reading, thinking, and learning. It is still available online by single issue, or you can buy all 5. I bought all 5 and have not regretted it at all. Well worth the money.
6. Roger S. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?” in “Alexandria,” vol. 5:287. Clever title! I can’t help it, I love articles like this.
7. Hey, it’s a real word. See Peter E. Meltzer, “The Thinker’s Thesaurus, Sophisticated Alternatives to Common Words,” W. W. Norton, 2015: 13, under “amazed, very amazed.” It’s actually considered slang according to Barbara Ann Kipfer, Robert L. Chapman, “Dictionary of American Slang,” Collins (division of HarperCollins), 2007: 216.
8. This detail noted by Isaac Asimov, “Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, The Living Stories of More than 1000 Great Scientists from the Age of Greece to the Space Age Chronologically Arranged,” Doubleday & Co., 1964: 495.
9. John Gribbin, “In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat,” Bantam Books, 1984: 92.
10. Richard Feynman, “The Meaning of it All,” Perseus Books, 1998: 10-12. Yes I left a lot out in between these incredible sentiments, oh well, get the book and see the details yourself, they’re there. It’s a splendid little read actually, makes for a fine rainy afternoon reading delight. Or two rainy afternoons, or three, or… See also Marcus Chown, “The Magic Furnace, The Search for the Origin of Atoms,” Oxford University Press, 2001: 211 – “In order that we might live stars in their billions, tens of billions, hundreds of billions even, have died. The iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the oxygen that fills our lungs each time we take a breath – all were cooked in the furnaces of the stars which expired long before the earth was born.”
11. Daniel Whiteson & Jorge Cham, “We Have No Idea, A Guide to the Unknown Universe,” Riverhead Books, 1st paperback, 2018: 65.
12. Frank Wilczek, “The Lightness of Being, Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces,” Basic Books, 2008: xiii.
13. Wilczek, “Lightness of Being,” p. 23.
14. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?” p. 287.
15. Gordon Fraser, “The New Physics for the Twenty-first Century,” Cambridge University Press, 2006: 145. There is a nice description of electromagnetic waves and their nature and range, with great graphics too, in Cutnell & Johnson, (Southern Illinois University at Carbondale) “Physics,” 6th edition, John Wiley & Sons, 2004: 722-727.
16. Jerry B. Marion, “Physics and the Physical Universe,” John Wiley & Sons, 1971, p. 197 says Coulomb (1736-1806) studied electrostatic forces and found that “the electrostatic force between two charged objects varies as the inverse square of the distance between them. That is, the electrostatic force has the same dependence on distance as does the gravitational force.” Jim Al-Khalili, “Quantum, A Guide For the Perplexed,” Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2003: 173 says the Coulomb barrier is “basically a force field that acts to contain the protons within a certain volume.” It doesn’t work with neutrons, since they are electrically neutral, of course. Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, “Quantum Enigma,” Oxford University Press, 2006: 43 simply say the Coulomb’s law is a simple formula that “tells the strength of the electrical force that one charged body (or charge) exerts on another charged body.” Cf. John Archibald Wheeler, “A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime,” Scientific American Library, 1990: 192-201 for intriguing description of a traveling electric charge and how electromagnetic waves compare to gravity waves. Very nifty graphics in this description as well!
17. Lisa Randall, “Warped Passages, Unravelling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions,” Harper Collins, 2005: 158.
18. Halliday, Resnick, Walker, “Fundamentals of Physics,” 6th edition, John Wiley and Sons, 2001: 1132. See also Stephen Hawking with Leonard Mlodinow, “The Grand Design,” Bantam Books, 2012: 88-85 for the development of the Electromagnetic “field.” Stephen Hawking with Leonard Mlodinow, “A Briefer History of Time,” Bantam paperback, 2008: 120-121, for fun details of the electromagnetic force. Cf. Stephen Hawking, “The Illustrated A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell,” Bantam Books, 2001: 43-55 (of the second book “The Universal in a Nutshell”) for cool illustrations helping us grasp the electromagnetic workings.
19. Richard Feynman, “QED, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter,” Princeton University Press, 1988: 5. After his delightful description of how light reflects off a mirror at various angles of incidence, noting that there are millions of ways the light can go, and we have to calculate all of them(!) in order to get the overall most accurate picture of the direction the photons are going, (pp. 36-76), Feynman then said he was cheating! Lol! In reality the photons are not bouncing off the mirror at all but are instead interacting with the electrons inside the glass! “Photons do nothing but go from one electron to the other, reflection and transmission are really the result of an electron picking up a photon.” (p. 76). Crazily, he demonstrates that not only does light not travel only in straight lines, but it doesn’t always go only at the speed of light either! Weird stuff man! (p. 89). You may want to say “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!” but he isn’t. Another indication of the weirdness is shown by physicist Leonard Susskind, “The Black Hole Wars,” Back Bay Books, 2008: 104 – “A single electron, spontaneously, without any warning, suddenly splits into an electron and a photon. (his note 8 here continues – Intuitively, we imagine that when something splits, each part is somehow less than the original. This is an idea inherited from common experience. The splitting of an electron into another electron, and an additional photon, shows how misleading our intuitions can be.)” See also Leonard Susskind, “The Cosmic Landscape,” Bay Back Books, 1st paperback, 2006: 99-104 for the importance of fields with electromagnetism and photons.
20. Richard Feynman, “Six Not So Easy Pieces,” Perseus Publishing, 1995, Preface, p. xxv. I have the combined edition of “Six Easy Pieces and Six Not So Easy Pieces,” which was a terrific idea for them to put all together!
21. Daniel Whiteson, “We Have No Idea,” p. 19. This fantastic little book is humorously illustrated with some of the best cartoons I have ever seen in a serious physics/astronomy book. Don’t let it fool you, there is seriously excellent information for we John Q. Public folks who want in on the science secrets. Highly recommended!
22. Whiteson, “We Have No Idea,” p. 20.
23. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?” p. 287-288.
24. Whiteson, “We Have No Idea,” p. 65.
25. Jocelyn Godwin, “Mentalism and the Cosmological Fallacy,” in “Alexandria, the Journal of the Western Cosmological Traditions,” edited by David Fideler, Phanes Press, 1993, Vol. 2: 197.
26. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?” p. 288.
27. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?” p. 289.
28. Richard Feynman, “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!,” W. W. Norton and Co., 1985: 233.
29. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?,” p. 289.
30. Whiteson, “We Have No Idea,” p. 286-287.
31. Leon Lederman, “Quantum Physics for Poets,” Prometheus Books, 2011: 14.
32. Lederman, “Quantum Physics for Poets,” p. 18. Cf. David Lindley, “Uncertainty,” Doubleday, 2007: 215 – “…science, for all its marvelous power and scope, had limits. Cold rationality would not, after all, supplant all other forms of knowledge.”
33. Frank Wilczek, “A Beautiful Question, Finding Nature’s Deep Design,” Penguin Books, 2015: 170.
34. Wilczek, “A Beautiful Question,” p. 112.
35. Frank Wilczek, “Longing for the Harmonies,” W. W. Norton, 1988: chapter 2; pp. 137-142.
36. Bernard Pullman, “The Atom in the History of Human Thought,” Oxford University Press, 1998: 278.
37. Pullman, “The Atom in the History of Human Thought,” p. 278.
38. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 279.
39. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 280.
40. Wilczek, “A Beautiful Question,” p. 182-183.
41. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 301.
42. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 291.
43. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 291.
44. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 291.
45. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 296.
46. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 300-301.
47. William Byers, “How Mathematicians Think, Using Ambiguity, Contradiction, and Paradox to Create Mathematics,” Princeton University Press, 2007: 358.
48. V. S. Ramachandran, Sandra Blakeslee, “Phantoms in the Brain,” Harper Perennial, 1st paperback, 1999: quote p. 58, different patients and their fascinating treatment in the entire chapter 3.
49. Morris Kline, “Mathematics, The Loss of Certainty,” Barnes & Noble, 2009: 87.
50. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 302.
51. Gordon Kane, “Supersymmetry and Beyond,” Revised edition, Basic Books, 2013: 12.
52. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?,” p. 290.
53. Max Tegmark, “Our Mathematical Universe, My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality,” Vintage Books, 2014. One helluva ride! One of the deepest, most disconcerting yet enjoyable books I have ever read, bar none. That is not to say I agree with it, of course. A definite must read.
54. Kline, “Mathematics and Loss of Certainty,” p. 409.
55. Kline, “Mathematics, Loss of Certainty,” p. 390.
56. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 309.
57. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 309-310.
58. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 310.
59. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 311.
60. James A. Lindsay, “Dot, Dot, Dot Infinity Plus God Equals Folly,” Onus Books, 2013: 12. As he notes in his opening parable, which is actually how it happened, “In the beginning, there were things, and there were no people to count them. After a time, there were people who could benefit by counting these things. Thus, the people abstracted and invented numbers so that they might count the things. Whether the people realized it or not, the numbers they counted with were not the things themselves, and neither did those numbers exist independently as things in themselves.” (p. 17).Compare his incomparably magnificent refutation of William Lane Craig, the Christian apologist, on the subject of God, where Lindsay says crisply, that Craig ridiculously attributes concreteness to abstractions and then calls the physical concreteness he himself stuck into the argument as absurd! But the absurdity is Craig’s as it would be easily cleared up if we just do away with all the physical place holders Craig puts into his argument on infinity and God. Instead of being absurd, these things are simply abstractions! See argument in “James A. Lindsay, “God Doesn’t, We Do,” CreateSpace, 2012: 108.
61. Roger Penrose, “The Road to Reality, a Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe,” Vintage Books, 2004: 12-17.
62. F. David Peat, “Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything,” Contemporary Books, 1988: 28.
63. Byers, “How Mathematicians Think,” p. 344.
64. Kurt Gottfried, Tung-Mow Yan, “Quantum Mechanics Fundamentals,” 2nd edition, Springer, 2004: 3.
65. Wilczek, “A Beautiful Question,” p. 185. Cf. Sten F. Oldenwald, “Patterns in the Void, Why Nothing is Important,” Westview Press, (an affiliate of the Perseus Press), 2002: 37-39.
66. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 312.
67. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 313.
68. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 315.
69. Gribbin, “In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat,” p. 174.
70. Rudy Rucker, “Infinity and the Mind,” Birkhauser, 1982: 26, 27, 28.
71. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?” p. 295.
72. David Lindley, “Uncertainty, Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science,” Doubleday, 2007: 216.
73. David Lindley, “Uncertainty,” pp. 132-139. To Heisenberg, who struggled mightily with which German word was best to explain the uncertainty of the location and momentum of a tested particle, it all caused headaches because of the fact that “An observer detecting the photon measures it not as a particle but as a little bundle of waves.” (p. 147). As F. David Peat put it “Mass enters as a derived notion, a by-product of the interaction of more fundamental, massless objects.” In “Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything,” Contemporary Books, 1988: 13. “The symmetries of the elementary particles are more like mathematical symmetries, symmetries that must be written down in abstract spaces…are they simply mathematical devices, abstractions of the mind…?” (p. 15).
74. Leon Lederman, “Quantum Physics for Poets,” p. 136.
75. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?” p. 295-296.
76. F. David Peat, “Einstein’s Moon, Bell’s Theorem and the Curious Quest for Quantum Reality,” Contemporary Books, 1990: 53.
77. Tim Maudlin, “Quantum Non-Locality & Relativity, Metaphysical Intimations of Modern Physics,” 3rd edition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011: 106-111.
78. John P. Briggs, F. David Peat, “Looking Glass Universe, The Emerging Science of Wholeness,” Cornerstone Library, 1984: 154.
79. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?” p. 296-297. Cf. Sean Carroll, “The Big Picture, On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself,” Dutton, 2016: 110-111, where he holds out for physical reality of atoms and refuses to believe there isn’t an objective reality out there. For a fantastic and deep analysis of matter in the early Modern period, see Kurt Smith, “Matter Matters, Metaphysics and Methodology in the Early Modern Period,” Oxford University Press, 2010.
80. Paul Davies, “The Cosmic Blueprint, New Discoveries in Nature’s Creative Ability to Order the Universe,” Simon and Schuster, 1988: 165.
81. Byers, “How Mathematicians Think,” p. 384. Mathematics is both content and process he also says.
82. David Fideler, “Reviving the Academy of the Muses,” in “Alexandria, a Journal of the Western Cosmological Traditions,” Phanes Press, 1991: Vol. 3: 214.
83. Dana Wilde, “Galaxies and Photons,” in “Alexandria, A Journal of the Western Cosmological Traditions,” Phanes Press, 1991: Vol. 1: 105-106. Ruth E. Kastner, “Understanding or Unseen Reality, Solving Quantum Puzzles,” Imperial College Press, 2015: 3-5 describes how when the quantum physicists first tried looking for atoms using their devices, it flummoxed them totally. The old solar system model didn’t work, and “there was nothing to put in its place except for some mathematical formulas… the atom itself seemed to vanish in a puff of smoke.”
84. Michael D. Fayer, “Absolutely Small, How Quantum Theory Explains Our Everyday World,” Amacom, 2010: 80-81. Ruth E. Kastner, “Understanding or Unseen Reality, Solving Quantum Puzzles,” p. v – “Reality extends beyond the observable realm of space and time, and quantum theory is what describes those extended but hidden aspects.” Cf. also Michael Cox, & Jeff Forshaw, “The Quantum Universe,” DaCapo Press, 2011: 30, Our explanation of an electron is possible “if we interpret the electron wave not as a real material disturbance but rather as something that simply informs us where the electron is likely to be found.”
85. John Gribbin, “Schrodinger’s Kittens and the Search for Reality, Solving the Quantum Mysteries,” Back Bay Books, 1995: 145.
86. Charles Seife, “Alpha & Omega,” Viking Books, 2003: 154.
87. F. David Peat, “Synchronicity, the Bridge Between Matter and Mind,” Bantam Books, 1987: 4. Cf. David Deutsch, “The Beginning of Infinity, Explanations that Transform the World,” Penguin Books, 2001: 34-41.
88. Donald Goldsmith, “The Runaway Universe, The Race to Find the Future of the Universe,” Perseus Books, 2000: 114.
89. Deutsch, “The Beginning of Infinity,” p. 41.
90. Carlo Rovelli, “Reality is Not What it Seems, The Journey to Quantum Gravity,” Penguin Books, 2016: 13.
91. Manjit Kumar, “Quantum, Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality,” W. W. Norton & Co., 2008: 360.
Back to Jones. “All of the probability distributions are derived from a wave function, which is the most fundamental source of information we have for the electron. And the wave function or state vector is even more abstract and less physical than a probability distribution. It is a mathematical representation of the potential manifestation of an electron – its mass, charge, spin, etc… the wave function itself is neither the electron, nor its probability, nor anything whatsoever physical about the electron. The wave function isn’t the rabbit in the hat. It isn’t even the chances of pulling a rabbit out of the hat. It is the potentiality of all the possible rabbits, pigeons, and other apparitions that may be pulled from the hat. The wave function represents all the ways an electron may manifest itself in an observation. It is not any one of these manifestations, but rather, all of them taken together. In fact, the wave function is decidedly nonphysical, for it represents all possible manifestations of an electron, which are mutually contradictory. An observed electron cannot be in several places at once, and yet the electron’s wave function represents simultaneously all the possible places an electron can be; not to mention all the speeds, energies, etc., that an electron can have… it is a complete mathematical abstraction, and ironically is most often represented by imaginary numbers, which are themselves mathematical abstractions that cannot directly represent ‘physical reality.’”(75) “Schrodinger’s wave theory had not done away with atomic mysticism after all; it had only deepened its effect!”(76)
David Bohm, one of the most original thinking quantum physicists actually came up with a system whereby the particles were actual particles, and they behave classically. The details are far too numerous to go into in this paper, but I will continue showing them in others. His idea is quite wide and broad which is discussed by several authors, other than himself, in easier fashion, such as F. David Peat, and Tim Maudlin, among others. It is a fascinating thing to see how various interpreters are attempting to bring in or rather, keep in determinism and physicality, both of which quantum physics has undermined entirely. The “real” ain’t “real” and that bothers people. The pipedream that if we knew the original positions of all particles in the universe, and the direction and speed they were moving, we could completely predict the future is on the fundamental level impossible. Reality is sustained on the back of probability and abstraction, not certainty. God does play dice much to Einstein’s chagrine. Bohm’s ideas are among the strongest, but they haven’t caught on, a fact that puzzled both Peat and Maudlin as I shall show in future research.(77) For now a tantalizing glimpse suffices: “such principles as the observer is the observed, everything affects everything else, wholeness as flowing movement, the inanimate world as alive, a multidimensional reality, and the changeableness of the laws of nature,” are some of the issues Bohm took head on.(78)
Back to Jones. “Thus quantum physics provides no materialistic basis for the physical world. Its totally hypothetical abstractions, its patterns of potentiality, its nonphysical, unobservable wave functions are the only representations of electrons (or anything else) that quantum physics provides us with. They are completely immaterial, unpalpable and ideational. At the most basic level in quantum physics, an electron is nothing but an idea, a collection or array or pattern of abstract and imaginary numbers that suggests the idea or potentiality of what an electron may be or do. There is nothing meaty, solid, hard, impenetrable, or resistive about the quantum electron… to explain materiality and tangibility, science begrudges us only abstract equations, laws, and principles. When we delve into the nature of matter with the tools and concepts of modern science, we find no corporeal atoms, no hard little particles, nothing material at all, but only ‘such stuff’ as dreams are made on.
All the ‘evidence’ of our senses and experiences cannot guarantee any material basis for reality. In fact, science refutes it. But that does not alter our experience. Rather, it forces us to reinterpret it. It makes us bite the bullet, and then admit its atoms are more fanciful than real. Rocks will still feel hard and water wet, but we must entertain the thought that our minds – or Mind – are somehow involved in conjuring our experiences. For if mathematical abstraction and ideas are at the core of experience (or reality, if you prefer), then where do those ideas and equations reside? What is the realm or expressive instrument of idea and abstraction? What other than mind? Contrary to its reputation, science may force us to reject materialism and to embrace, instead an ideal or spiritual foundation for matter. We may just have to take quantum physics at face value and recognize in it the best argument we have that the world is an idea.”(79) Just holy cow man! Right? Yeah, that’s a jolt of electricity. The British astrophysicist Paul Davies is in complete agreement with Jones, or actually it is probably Davies who gives Jones his ideas in many regards, since Davies wrote before Jones: “Whereas the old physics generally employed everyday concepts of space, time, matter, differing from familiar experience only in degree, the new physics was formulated in terms of abstract mathematical entities and algorithms.”(80)
Byers gives us another zap that raises the hair on end:
“If mathematics cannot be accurately represented as isolated from its environment, it follows that an adequate description of mathematics will have to include the related processes of creating and understanding mathematics. The normal view is that there is an objective body of mathematical theory on the one side and, on the other, the mathematician who creates the theory or the consumer who uses it. The idea that there could be a point of view that contains both elements, that is, the introduction of this human element, changes everything. Mathematics is no longer a strictly ‘objective’ theory. ‘Objectivity’ is merely a description of one dimension of mathematics; that is, objectivity is merely an approximation to what is going on. It is one point of view – a useful one – but not the definitive one. If mathematics includes the mathematician, then it is reasonable to see intelligence as an essential ingredient of mathematics.”(81)
As one of my favorite authors, David Fideler has noted “Reality is thus something of a malleable and magical construction, based on what we invoke.”(82) Dana Wilde invokes in us a sense of wonder as he propounds that “immensity is a kind of surrealism. Subatomia is a kind of surrealism… immensity and subatomia are abstract, in the nature of principles rather than concretions. Some things are too big to see, other things are too small to see. As a result they must be imagined… when we speak of subatomic particles it is not the particles themselves we comprehend. Rather, it is the mathematical representation of the behavior of the particles that we comprehend. We do not even know what the particles look like, except as streaks on film, and the streaks are only indications of the particle’s existence, no more the particles themselves than a photograph of your brother lounging in the hammock under pine trees is your brother himself. So talk about particles is talk about what the particles are like; it is all metaphorical… what we comprehend is the metaphor, not the atom… the signifier is not the signified.”(83) What we imagine we make exhibited into the world, amazingly enough. Michael D. Fayer said it the most simply. “When a particle is in a superpositional state, a wave packet, we have some knowledge of its position and some knowledge of its momentum. So are photons, electrons, and so on waves or particles? They answer is that they are wave packets. Whether they seem to be particles or seem to be waves depends on what experiment you do, that is, what question you ask.”(84) Now, of course, he is talking about being in the scientific room with all the equipment of the double slit boards, the projector for photons, etc., and whether we leave one slit open or closed and shoot beams of photons through the slits. We don’t do this in just everyday living rooms of our houses. Or do we? I will discuss in detail all this in the 2nd part of my investigation. For now, I think John Gribbin, the Cambridge University astrophysicist has it about right, when he notes Einstein’s Theory of Relativity does not have numerous weird and contradictory interpretations of it, yet quantum physics does! And each one of them actually comply with some experiment or the other! Now that’s weird. I love the metaphor he notes Heinz Pagels used “we should learn a little bit about the quantum world from each of the interpretations, considering all of them together in a kind of superposition of possibilities.”(85)
It is remarkably interesting that Murray Gell-Mann, when he proposed his theory of quarks (taking the name from James Joyce’s book!) he found an underlying shape to the variegated particles that had been discovered. The eight baryons that were named up, down, and other strange quarks, he named the pattern “the eightfold way” which reminds us of the Buddha’s tenets for leading the good life and achieving enlightenment. Just one of those fun little things to notice.(86)
The Physicist John Wheeler said we are not even in a simply observer universe where we just look, but a participatory universe where we are directly involved. This interconnectedness includes us, not as being apart from nature, but a part of nature.(87) Donald Goldsmith proposed that one of the beauties of science is the skepticism. The more we seek rather than simply believe because we are told, even when experiments supposedly confirm a thing, the more apt we are to find truth or even more correct truth. “Scientific skepticism brings out the truth.”(88) And skepticism about scientific conclusions based on abstractions further help us find truth as this paper has demonstrated. There is more to the world than science has met and understood, no question about that. But as the physicist David Deutsch noted “It may seem strange that scientific instruments bring us closer to reality when in purely physical terms they only separate us further from it. But we observe nothing directly anyway. All observation is theory-laden.”(89) In his historical survey of reality, Carlo Rovelli described how Parmenides had explored the avenue of using reason alone in order to find the truth. He ended up admitting that “all appearances are illusory.”(90) It’s only taken another two millenia for us to catch up to Parmenides! Now this is not Rovelli’s conclusion as he sides with the atomists anciently and modern who say atoms are real physical entities, of which, as we have seen, he ought to revise his understanding. But old habits die hard. So what’s the take away in all this? It is very simple. “The aspiration to truth is more precious than its assured possession.”(91)
END PART 1
Endnotes
1. William York Tindall, “A Reader’s Guide to James Joyce,” Syracuse University Press, 1st Syracuse edition, 1995: 239.
2. Joseph Campbell, “Mythic Worlds, Modern Words,” HarperCollinsPublishers, 1993: 69.
3. Victor J. Stenger, “God and the Folly of Faith,” Prometheus Books, 2012: 212.
4. Robert B. Laughlin, “A Different Universe, Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down,” Basic Books, 2005: 138-139.
5. Roger S. Jones, in “Alexandria, the Journal of the Western Cosmological Tradition,” edited by David Fideler, Phanes Press, 2000: biographical note, p. 461. This journal, formed by David Fideler, unfortunately only lasted for 5 annual issues, though each is a book and smorgasbord of delightful investigations into issues of philosophy, music, art, religion, science, and culture. It is one of my very favorite sets of “books,” each coming in at a hefty 450-500 pages, giving plenty of reading, thinking, and learning. It is still available online by single issue, or you can buy all 5. I bought all 5 and have not regretted it at all. Well worth the money.
6. Roger S. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?” in “Alexandria,” vol. 5:287. Clever title! I can’t help it, I love articles like this.
7. Hey, it’s a real word. See Peter E. Meltzer, “The Thinker’s Thesaurus, Sophisticated Alternatives to Common Words,” W. W. Norton, 2015: 13, under “amazed, very amazed.” It’s actually considered slang according to Barbara Ann Kipfer, Robert L. Chapman, “Dictionary of American Slang,” Collins (division of HarperCollins), 2007: 216.
8. This detail noted by Isaac Asimov, “Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, The Living Stories of More than 1000 Great Scientists from the Age of Greece to the Space Age Chronologically Arranged,” Doubleday & Co., 1964: 495.
9. John Gribbin, “In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat,” Bantam Books, 1984: 92.
10. Richard Feynman, “The Meaning of it All,” Perseus Books, 1998: 10-12. Yes I left a lot out in between these incredible sentiments, oh well, get the book and see the details yourself, they’re there. It’s a splendid little read actually, makes for a fine rainy afternoon reading delight. Or two rainy afternoons, or three, or… See also Marcus Chown, “The Magic Furnace, The Search for the Origin of Atoms,” Oxford University Press, 2001: 211 – “In order that we might live stars in their billions, tens of billions, hundreds of billions even, have died. The iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the oxygen that fills our lungs each time we take a breath – all were cooked in the furnaces of the stars which expired long before the earth was born.”
11. Daniel Whiteson & Jorge Cham, “We Have No Idea, A Guide to the Unknown Universe,” Riverhead Books, 1st paperback, 2018: 65.
12. Frank Wilczek, “The Lightness of Being, Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces,” Basic Books, 2008: xiii.
13. Wilczek, “Lightness of Being,” p. 23.
14. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?” p. 287.
15. Gordon Fraser, “The New Physics for the Twenty-first Century,” Cambridge University Press, 2006: 145. There is a nice description of electromagnetic waves and their nature and range, with great graphics too, in Cutnell & Johnson, (Southern Illinois University at Carbondale) “Physics,” 6th edition, John Wiley & Sons, 2004: 722-727.
16. Jerry B. Marion, “Physics and the Physical Universe,” John Wiley & Sons, 1971, p. 197 says Coulomb (1736-1806) studied electrostatic forces and found that “the electrostatic force between two charged objects varies as the inverse square of the distance between them. That is, the electrostatic force has the same dependence on distance as does the gravitational force.” Jim Al-Khalili, “Quantum, A Guide For the Perplexed,” Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2003: 173 says the Coulomb barrier is “basically a force field that acts to contain the protons within a certain volume.” It doesn’t work with neutrons, since they are electrically neutral, of course. Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, “Quantum Enigma,” Oxford University Press, 2006: 43 simply say the Coulomb’s law is a simple formula that “tells the strength of the electrical force that one charged body (or charge) exerts on another charged body.” Cf. John Archibald Wheeler, “A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime,” Scientific American Library, 1990: 192-201 for intriguing description of a traveling electric charge and how electromagnetic waves compare to gravity waves. Very nifty graphics in this description as well!
17. Lisa Randall, “Warped Passages, Unravelling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions,” Harper Collins, 2005: 158.
18. Halliday, Resnick, Walker, “Fundamentals of Physics,” 6th edition, John Wiley and Sons, 2001: 1132. See also Stephen Hawking with Leonard Mlodinow, “The Grand Design,” Bantam Books, 2012: 88-85 for the development of the Electromagnetic “field.” Stephen Hawking with Leonard Mlodinow, “A Briefer History of Time,” Bantam paperback, 2008: 120-121, for fun details of the electromagnetic force. Cf. Stephen Hawking, “The Illustrated A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell,” Bantam Books, 2001: 43-55 (of the second book “The Universal in a Nutshell”) for cool illustrations helping us grasp the electromagnetic workings.
19. Richard Feynman, “QED, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter,” Princeton University Press, 1988: 5. After his delightful description of how light reflects off a mirror at various angles of incidence, noting that there are millions of ways the light can go, and we have to calculate all of them(!) in order to get the overall most accurate picture of the direction the photons are going, (pp. 36-76), Feynman then said he was cheating! Lol! In reality the photons are not bouncing off the mirror at all but are instead interacting with the electrons inside the glass! “Photons do nothing but go from one electron to the other, reflection and transmission are really the result of an electron picking up a photon.” (p. 76). Crazily, he demonstrates that not only does light not travel only in straight lines, but it doesn’t always go only at the speed of light either! Weird stuff man! (p. 89). You may want to say “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!” but he isn’t. Another indication of the weirdness is shown by physicist Leonard Susskind, “The Black Hole Wars,” Back Bay Books, 2008: 104 – “A single electron, spontaneously, without any warning, suddenly splits into an electron and a photon. (his note 8 here continues – Intuitively, we imagine that when something splits, each part is somehow less than the original. This is an idea inherited from common experience. The splitting of an electron into another electron, and an additional photon, shows how misleading our intuitions can be.)” See also Leonard Susskind, “The Cosmic Landscape,” Bay Back Books, 1st paperback, 2006: 99-104 for the importance of fields with electromagnetism and photons.
20. Richard Feynman, “Six Not So Easy Pieces,” Perseus Publishing, 1995, Preface, p. xxv. I have the combined edition of “Six Easy Pieces and Six Not So Easy Pieces,” which was a terrific idea for them to put all together!
21. Daniel Whiteson, “We Have No Idea,” p. 19. This fantastic little book is humorously illustrated with some of the best cartoons I have ever seen in a serious physics/astronomy book. Don’t let it fool you, there is seriously excellent information for we John Q. Public folks who want in on the science secrets. Highly recommended!
22. Whiteson, “We Have No Idea,” p. 20.
23. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?” p. 287-288.
24. Whiteson, “We Have No Idea,” p. 65.
25. Jocelyn Godwin, “Mentalism and the Cosmological Fallacy,” in “Alexandria, the Journal of the Western Cosmological Traditions,” edited by David Fideler, Phanes Press, 1993, Vol. 2: 197.
26. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?” p. 288.
27. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?” p. 289.
28. Richard Feynman, “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!,” W. W. Norton and Co., 1985: 233.
29. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?,” p. 289.
30. Whiteson, “We Have No Idea,” p. 286-287.
31. Leon Lederman, “Quantum Physics for Poets,” Prometheus Books, 2011: 14.
32. Lederman, “Quantum Physics for Poets,” p. 18. Cf. David Lindley, “Uncertainty,” Doubleday, 2007: 215 – “…science, for all its marvelous power and scope, had limits. Cold rationality would not, after all, supplant all other forms of knowledge.”
33. Frank Wilczek, “A Beautiful Question, Finding Nature’s Deep Design,” Penguin Books, 2015: 170.
34. Wilczek, “A Beautiful Question,” p. 112.
35. Frank Wilczek, “Longing for the Harmonies,” W. W. Norton, 1988: chapter 2; pp. 137-142.
36. Bernard Pullman, “The Atom in the History of Human Thought,” Oxford University Press, 1998: 278.
37. Pullman, “The Atom in the History of Human Thought,” p. 278.
38. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 279.
39. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 280.
40. Wilczek, “A Beautiful Question,” p. 182-183.
41. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 301.
42. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 291.
43. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 291.
44. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 291.
45. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 296.
46. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 300-301.
47. William Byers, “How Mathematicians Think, Using Ambiguity, Contradiction, and Paradox to Create Mathematics,” Princeton University Press, 2007: 358.
48. V. S. Ramachandran, Sandra Blakeslee, “Phantoms in the Brain,” Harper Perennial, 1st paperback, 1999: quote p. 58, different patients and their fascinating treatment in the entire chapter 3.
49. Morris Kline, “Mathematics, The Loss of Certainty,” Barnes & Noble, 2009: 87.
50. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 302.
51. Gordon Kane, “Supersymmetry and Beyond,” Revised edition, Basic Books, 2013: 12.
52. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?,” p. 290.
53. Max Tegmark, “Our Mathematical Universe, My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality,” Vintage Books, 2014. One helluva ride! One of the deepest, most disconcerting yet enjoyable books I have ever read, bar none. That is not to say I agree with it, of course. A definite must read.
54. Kline, “Mathematics and Loss of Certainty,” p. 409.
55. Kline, “Mathematics, Loss of Certainty,” p. 390.
56. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 309.
57. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 309-310.
58. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 310.
59. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 311.
60. James A. Lindsay, “Dot, Dot, Dot Infinity Plus God Equals Folly,” Onus Books, 2013: 12. As he notes in his opening parable, which is actually how it happened, “In the beginning, there were things, and there were no people to count them. After a time, there were people who could benefit by counting these things. Thus, the people abstracted and invented numbers so that they might count the things. Whether the people realized it or not, the numbers they counted with were not the things themselves, and neither did those numbers exist independently as things in themselves.” (p. 17).Compare his incomparably magnificent refutation of William Lane Craig, the Christian apologist, on the subject of God, where Lindsay says crisply, that Craig ridiculously attributes concreteness to abstractions and then calls the physical concreteness he himself stuck into the argument as absurd! But the absurdity is Craig’s as it would be easily cleared up if we just do away with all the physical place holders Craig puts into his argument on infinity and God. Instead of being absurd, these things are simply abstractions! See argument in “James A. Lindsay, “God Doesn’t, We Do,” CreateSpace, 2012: 108.
61. Roger Penrose, “The Road to Reality, a Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe,” Vintage Books, 2004: 12-17.
62. F. David Peat, “Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything,” Contemporary Books, 1988: 28.
63. Byers, “How Mathematicians Think,” p. 344.
64. Kurt Gottfried, Tung-Mow Yan, “Quantum Mechanics Fundamentals,” 2nd edition, Springer, 2004: 3.
65. Wilczek, “A Beautiful Question,” p. 185. Cf. Sten F. Oldenwald, “Patterns in the Void, Why Nothing is Important,” Westview Press, (an affiliate of the Perseus Press), 2002: 37-39.
66. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 312.
67. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 313.
68. Pullman, “Ibid.,” p. 315.
69. Gribbin, “In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat,” p. 174.
70. Rudy Rucker, “Infinity and the Mind,” Birkhauser, 1982: 26, 27, 28.
71. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?” p. 295.
72. David Lindley, “Uncertainty, Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science,” Doubleday, 2007: 216.
73. David Lindley, “Uncertainty,” pp. 132-139. To Heisenberg, who struggled mightily with which German word was best to explain the uncertainty of the location and momentum of a tested particle, it all caused headaches because of the fact that “An observer detecting the photon measures it not as a particle but as a little bundle of waves.” (p. 147). As F. David Peat put it “Mass enters as a derived notion, a by-product of the interaction of more fundamental, massless objects.” In “Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything,” Contemporary Books, 1988: 13. “The symmetries of the elementary particles are more like mathematical symmetries, symmetries that must be written down in abstract spaces…are they simply mathematical devices, abstractions of the mind…?” (p. 15).
74. Leon Lederman, “Quantum Physics for Poets,” p. 136.
75. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?” p. 295-296.
76. F. David Peat, “Einstein’s Moon, Bell’s Theorem and the Curious Quest for Quantum Reality,” Contemporary Books, 1990: 53.
77. Tim Maudlin, “Quantum Non-Locality & Relativity, Metaphysical Intimations of Modern Physics,” 3rd edition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011: 106-111.
78. John P. Briggs, F. David Peat, “Looking Glass Universe, The Emerging Science of Wholeness,” Cornerstone Library, 1984: 154.
79. Jones, “Is Anything the Matter?” p. 296-297. Cf. Sean Carroll, “The Big Picture, On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself,” Dutton, 2016: 110-111, where he holds out for physical reality of atoms and refuses to believe there isn’t an objective reality out there. For a fantastic and deep analysis of matter in the early Modern period, see Kurt Smith, “Matter Matters, Metaphysics and Methodology in the Early Modern Period,” Oxford University Press, 2010.
80. Paul Davies, “The Cosmic Blueprint, New Discoveries in Nature’s Creative Ability to Order the Universe,” Simon and Schuster, 1988: 165.
81. Byers, “How Mathematicians Think,” p. 384. Mathematics is both content and process he also says.
82. David Fideler, “Reviving the Academy of the Muses,” in “Alexandria, a Journal of the Western Cosmological Traditions,” Phanes Press, 1991: Vol. 3: 214.
83. Dana Wilde, “Galaxies and Photons,” in “Alexandria, A Journal of the Western Cosmological Traditions,” Phanes Press, 1991: Vol. 1: 105-106. Ruth E. Kastner, “Understanding or Unseen Reality, Solving Quantum Puzzles,” Imperial College Press, 2015: 3-5 describes how when the quantum physicists first tried looking for atoms using their devices, it flummoxed them totally. The old solar system model didn’t work, and “there was nothing to put in its place except for some mathematical formulas… the atom itself seemed to vanish in a puff of smoke.”
84. Michael D. Fayer, “Absolutely Small, How Quantum Theory Explains Our Everyday World,” Amacom, 2010: 80-81. Ruth E. Kastner, “Understanding or Unseen Reality, Solving Quantum Puzzles,” p. v – “Reality extends beyond the observable realm of space and time, and quantum theory is what describes those extended but hidden aspects.” Cf. also Michael Cox, & Jeff Forshaw, “The Quantum Universe,” DaCapo Press, 2011: 30, Our explanation of an electron is possible “if we interpret the electron wave not as a real material disturbance but rather as something that simply informs us where the electron is likely to be found.”
85. John Gribbin, “Schrodinger’s Kittens and the Search for Reality, Solving the Quantum Mysteries,” Back Bay Books, 1995: 145.
86. Charles Seife, “Alpha & Omega,” Viking Books, 2003: 154.
87. F. David Peat, “Synchronicity, the Bridge Between Matter and Mind,” Bantam Books, 1987: 4. Cf. David Deutsch, “The Beginning of Infinity, Explanations that Transform the World,” Penguin Books, 2001: 34-41.
88. Donald Goldsmith, “The Runaway Universe, The Race to Find the Future of the Universe,” Perseus Books, 2000: 114.
89. Deutsch, “The Beginning of Infinity,” p. 41.
90. Carlo Rovelli, “Reality is Not What it Seems, The Journey to Quantum Gravity,” Penguin Books, 2016: 13.
91. Manjit Kumar, “Quantum, Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality,” W. W. Norton & Co., 2008: 360.