I thought this article was interesting, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on it. It’s hardly scientific or religious, but I’d like to see how this idea fits with your views.
“Be the first to respond”…
- Like the foundation sentence “I think therefore I am”, I do believe that a non-scientific examination of the Cosmos is a justifiable motivation to believe in a Divine Consciousness, the immaterial nature of something awfully important in the Universe.
BUT
- I do not believe a SCIENTIFIC examination (so far) can provide SCIENTIFIC justification for such beliefs.
1 Like
Hello Quincy,
I’d say I agree with @gbrooks9 As a theoretical physics graduate, I spent some time thinking about quantum physics and its implications. Honestly, the topic still confuses me and I cannot claim to have a good intuition for it. Still, I’ll share some thoughts.
The article uses the double split experiment to illustrate the role of consciousness into collapsing a quantum wave function. Yet, I don’t think I quite agree with this point. In the classical double split experiment, ‘measurement’ causes the wave function to collapse. Some consider this measurement as a conscious process, but in my opinion this is not necessary. Rather it’s a physical interaction that gives information about the state of the system. So for me, the link to consciousness is not yet so clear, though I haven’t had time to look into some of the articles that are quoted.
Cheers,
Guus
A nice article, but not really new. John Wheeler’s “It from Bit”–we create the world by observing it–has been around for quite a while. See (department of shameless self-promotion) my post "It from Bit–what about God?" and (more shameless self-promotion) “Quantum Divine Action via God, the Berkeleyan Observer”, and I discuss this and the delayed choice experiment at some length in my ebook, “The Quantum Catholic” (and yet still more shameless…etc.).
The idea that consciousness was the final stage in the quantum measurement process is a very old idea, stemming from Von Neumann and Wigner, among others. The delayed choice experiment is a fine example that the will of the observer calls the tune (unless that will is not free and everything is set beforehand.
Perhaps the best insight is that of Bernard d’Espagnat, a physicist-philosopher, who participated in the Aspect experiments testing Bell’s Theorem, that Quantum Mechanics reveals “a veiled reality”. Or perhaps a better insight is that of Richard Feynman that “nobody understands quantum mechanics”.
And if Feynman couldn’t understand it, there’s no point in anyone else trying. 
The article struck me as more New Age speculation than hard science. Quantum theory seems like the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers than a description of reality, (An imaginary number is the square root of -1, impossible since the square of a negative number is positive, but is represented as a lower case i.) Imaginary numbers don’t really exist, but when the imaginary solution of one equation is put into another equation, the result can sometimes be useful, especially in electronics and acoustics. Quantum theory explains the workings of atoms, but at the level of daily life, it is more a mathematical trick.
This topic was automatically closed 6 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.